Slide 1

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 2

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 3

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 4

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 5

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 6

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 7

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 8

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 9

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 10

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 11

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 12

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 13

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 14

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 15

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 16

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 17

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 18

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 19

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 20

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 21

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 22

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 23

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 24

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 25

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 26

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 27

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 28

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 29

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 30

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 31

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 32

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 33

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 34

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 35

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 36

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 37

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 38

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 39

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 40

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 41

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 42

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 43

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 44

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 45

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 46

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 47

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 48

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 49

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 50

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 51

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 52

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 53

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 54

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 55

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 56

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 57

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 58

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 59

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 60

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 61

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 62

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 63

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 64

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 65

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 66

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 67

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 68

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 69

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 70

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 71

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 72

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 73

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 74

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 75

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 76

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 77

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 78

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 79

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 80

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 81

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 82

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 83

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 84

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 85

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 86

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 87

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 88

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 89

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.


Slide 90

CCHEA
Creation Seminar
01/17/08
Presented by David A. Prentice, M.Ed., M.A.S.T.
www.originsresource.org
[email protected]
Background graphic courtesy of Mike Riddle, Answers in Genesis
Contains photos taken by the author at various locations,
and other pictures as noted

PART 3:

Does it Really Matter
Whether the Earth is
Old or Young?

WHAT MOST PEOPLE THINK:
Evolution is science...

Creation is religion.

Historical Ideas About the Age of the Earth
Ancient Greeks such as Aristotle: Earth is extremely old, may
have existed forever.
Genesis: Earth is young.
1200s - Thomas Aquinas reverts to Aristotelian logic and old
earth.
1700s - Buffon proposes days of Genesis as extended periods
of time.
Cuvier proposes multiple global catastrophes over millions
of years.
Hutton rejects catastrophes, proposes uniformitarianism.
1800s - Lyell expands on Hutton’s ideas, says earth millions of
years old.
Darwin builds his theory on Hutton’s and Lyell’s ideas
about uniformitarianism.
1900s – Radioactivity discovered, age of earth revised to
billions of years.

HOW LONG ARE THE “Days” in Genesis?
The Hebrew word for “day” is

(YOM).
Depending on context, it can mean
1. A 24 hour day,
2. The daylight portion of a day, or
3. An indefinite period of time.

Every time throughout the Old Testament that
is
used with a number (over 350 times outside Genesis
Chapter 1) it always means a 24 hour day.
This is the way it appears in the Creation account.

God obviously intended to say
that these were 24 hour days.

All Scripture is inspired by God...

but this Scripture was written with His own finger.

For [in] six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the
sea, and all that in them [is]... (Exod. 20:11)

COULD THE “DAYS” HAVE BEEN
MILLIONS OF YEARS?
The sequence of events in Genesis 1:
Day 3, plants created.
Day 4, sun created.
Day 5, insects created.
How many million years can most
plants live without sunlight?
How many million years can they live
without insects to pollinate them?

MARTIN LUTHER ON THE AGE OF THE EARTH
“When Moses writes that God created
heaven and earth and whatever is in them
in six days, then let this period continue to
have been six days, and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which
six days were one day.
“But, if you cannot understand how this
could have been done in six days, then
grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being
more learned that you are.”

YEARS SINCE CREATION (Massoretic Text)
0

500

1000

1500

2000

1656

Death of Adam

Death of Noah

Earth divided

THE FLOOD

ADAM - 930 years -----------------------------------SETH - 912 yrs ----------------------------- d. 1042
ENOSH - 905 yrs -------------------------- d. 1140
KENAN - 910 yrs -------------------------- d. 1235
MAHALALEL - 895 yrs ----------------- d. 1290
JARED - 962 yrs --------------------------------- d. 1422
ENOCH, 365 yrs
Tower of Babel
(walked with God)
METHUSALEH --------------- 969 yrs, d. 1656 (between 1757
LAMECH - 777 yrs --------------- d. 1652
and 1996)
NOAH - 950 yrs ------------------------------- d. 2006

SHEM - 600 yrs -------- d. 2157
Arpachshad, 438 --d. 2096
Shelah, 433 -- d. 2126
Eber, 464 ------ d. 2187
Peleg, 239 -d. 1996
Reu, 239 ----d. 2026
Serug, 230 d. 2049
Nahor-147, d. 1997
Terah ----205, d. 2082
Abraham195, d. 2122
Isaac ---180, d. 2227
Jacob149, d. 2254

New Testament Clues for a Young Earth
J “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and
female” (Mk. 10:6).
E
He didn’t say “In the last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.”
S
“For [in] those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the
U
beginning of the creation which God created unto this time,
S
neither shall be” (Mk. 13:19).
Evolutionists say mass extinctions have wiped out over 99% of all
the species that have ever lived. Wouldn’t that be the worst
affliction?
“... he [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning...” (Jn. 8:44)
Not just during last 1/1000 of 1% of earth’s history.

P “... the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid
in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ: To the intent that
A
now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly [places] might
U
be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God...” (Eph.
L
3:10).
Did God have to wait through 4.5 billion years of evolution before
He could accomplish His purposes through the Church?

Compare this to The Evolutionary Time Scale.
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Paleozoic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Archaeozoic Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

Source: Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology

} CARBON} IFEROUS

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.

IF THERE WAS A WORLDWIDE FLOOD,
WHAT WOULD WE EXPECT TO FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains.

WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY FIND?
Billions and billions of dead things buried in rock layers
laid down by water all over the whole earth, even on top of
the highest mountains!

HOW DO YOU MAKE A FOSSIL?
1. Bury something quickly so it doesn’t rot.
2. Make sure the right kind of minerals are in
the mud or water.
3. Apply lots of heat and pressure.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
CHICKEN BONES:
?
OIL:
?

You may have heard that it takes millions
of years to make a fossil. Wrong!
•
•

•

Chicken bones have been turned into mineralized
fossils in laboratories in 5 to 10 years.
Organic garbage (banana peels, etc.) has been
turned into crude oil, otherwise known as “fossil
fuel,” in as little as 20 minutes.
Spark plugs are often
Spark plugs from Durban harbor
used as fishing sinkers
in Durban, S. Africa.
The water has such a
high concentration of
minerals that they
become coated and
look like fossils in just
Courtesy of Joshua Gilbert
a few years!

OK, so fossils can form
quickly. But how can we
tell how old they are?

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO “KNOW” SOMETHING?
1. Personal Experience
through the five senses.
I know a bee sting hurts;
I know how to ride a bike.
3. Logic.
I know 2 million + 2 million =
4 million, even though I’ve
never counted that high.
I know I have a brain, even
though I’ve never seen it.

5. Wishful Thinking (you
really want it to be true)
I just know I’m going to
win the lottery!

2. Reliance on Authority.
I know the sun is 93
million miles away;
Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
4. Feeling or Intuition.
I know she’s the one for
me; I know God has called
me to the ministry.
6. Bluffing (lying) - you try to persuade
others for an ulterior motive.
You should buy these tickets from me
because I know this team is going
to the Super Bowl this year;
I know evolution is a fact!

THE PREHISTORIC PAST:
1. No living person has personal experience.

2. There are no eyewitness accounts except the
Bible, which is unacceptable to skeptics.
SO HOW DO WE “KNOW” ABOUT THE
BEGINNING? Through LOGIC ONLY.

Both sides
look at the
same evidence…

- We just start
with different
premises to
interpret it.

EVEN WITH CORRECT LOGIC, FALSE PREMISES
CAN LEAD TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS.
All dogs bark. (Or, “If an animal is a dog, then it barks.”)
Fido is a dog.
Therefore, Fido barks.
Not
if
Fido
is
a
Basenji!

Basenjis
do
not
bark.

If any one of our premises is wrong,
then our conclusion is unreliable.

WHAT IF THERE IS EVEN ONE THING IN
NATURE THAT REQUIRES GOD?
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex
organ existed which could not possibly have
been formed by numerous successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely
break down.”
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

EVOLUTION: Natural Processes Only!
"Even if all the data point to an intelligent
designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic."
Immunologist Scott C. Todd in a letter to Nature
magazine, Sept. 1999

“... the theory of evolution itself [is] a theory
universally accepted not because it can be
proved by logically coherent evidence to
be true but because the only alternative,
special creation, is clearly incredible.”
D.M.S. Watson, “Adaptation,” Nature, Vol. 123 (1929), p.233

MATERIALISM: NO GOD ALLOWED!
"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many
of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the
tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a
commitment to materialism.
“It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how
mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an
absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons, The New York
Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

1. Everything must be explainable by purely
natural processes.
a. Atheistic evolution: There is no God.
b. Theistic evolution: Since the Big Bang,
God has had little involvement with
nature.
2. Since there could be no other natural
processes besides evolution, evolution
is the only possibility.

1. A supernatural intelligence created the
universe. Though most things are
explainable by natural processes, some
things may not be.

3. Since evolution has never been seen in
human history, it must be very slow. The
universe and earth have to be billions of
years old.

2. God is powerful enough to use any
method he chooses, including
instantaneous creation.
3. Creation does not automatically require
a specific age.
a. Recent Creation: The earth is probably less than 10,000 years old.
b. Gap Theory & Progressive Creation:
Because evolutionists must know
what they are talking about, the earth
has to be billions of years old.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

BASIC PREMISES OF EVOLUTION AND CREATION
EVOLUTION:
4. Because a worldwide flood would cut
billions of years off the time needed to
produce the fossil record, there can
never have been a worldwide flood.

CREATION:
4. The Flood.
a. Recent Creation: One worldwide
flood.
b. Gap Theory: Two worldwide floods.
c. Progressive Creation: No worldwide
flood.

LIKE THE POSTULATES OF GEOMETRY, NEITHER SET OF PREMISES CAN
BE PROVEN. THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED BY FAITH AS SELF-EVIDENT.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

The Geologic Column
ERA

PERIOD

EPOCH

Cenozoic

Quaternary

Holocene (Recent)
Pleistocene
Pliocene
Miocene
Oligocene
Eocene
Paleocene

Tertiary

Mesozoic

Paleozoic

Archaeozoic

Cretaceous
Jurassic
Triassic
Permian
Pennsylvanian
Mississippian
Devonian
Silurian
Ordovician
Cambrian
Precambrian
(incl. Ediacaran or Vendian,

Appr. Beginning (Years Ago)
10,000
1.8 million
5.3 million
23.8 million
33.7 million
54.8 million
65 million
144 million
206 million
248 million
290 million
323 million
354 million
417 million
443 million
490 million
543 million
4.5 billion
650 million)

} CARBON} IFEROUS

Most of these ages were assigned before
radioactivity was even discovered.

Basic Fossil Predictions of Creation vs. Evolution:
CREATION
(Complex to Simple)

EVOLUTION
(Simple to Complex)

1. Strata represent ecological
communities. There should be a
pattern of clearly defined fossil
communities around the world.
2. Catastrophism.
3. Many higher taxa (kingdom,
phylum, class, order) should
appear at the beginning. The
number should decrease
through time.
4. Sudden appearance of each
basic type.
5. Stasis (resistance to basic
change).

1. Strata represent time periods.
There should be a continual
overlap of life forms with no
consistent worldwide patterns.
2. Uniformitarianism.
3. Few higher taxa should be
represented in the earliest
fossil-bearing rocks. The
number should increase
through time.
4. Gradual development of new
basic types.
5. Continual gradual change.

SUITES OF FOSSILS
Rather than using radioactive dating, geologists
identify each rock layer (Cambrian, Ordivician,
Devonian, etc.) by a clearly defined community or
suite of fossils that is essentially the same no
matter where in the world we find it.
If evolution occurred, different types from amoebas
to humans would have had to evolve
at different rates
in different places
at different times.
There should be no worldwide pattern of clearly
defined communities of fossils.
Yet this is precisely how we identify rocks.

EVOLUTION IS CLEARLY WRONG.

PROBLEMS IN THE GEOLOGIC COLUMN
In general, the earth’s rock layers contain fossils that seem to
increase in complexity from bottom to top. However, there
are hundreds of exceptions where individual fossils or entire
strata are in the wrong order.
CREATION SAYS:

EVOLUTION SAYS:

Suites of fossils represent ecological
communities which fit their
environment. Those near the bottom
of the ocean have shapes appropriate
to their habitat and only appear
simpler.
Misplaced fossils and strata are
probably the result of hydraulic flood
action moving them out of their
normal habitat, or deformation while
the sediment was still soft.

Suites of fossils represent time
periods. Those near the bottom look
simpler because they evolved first
and are simpler.

Misplaced fossils and strata are the
result of geologic processes such as
faulting and overthrusting, millions
of years after the rocks had fully
hardened.

Deformation of Sedimentary Layers

Above and right:
Deformed strata in
the Swartberg
Mountains of S.
Africa.
Right: Meteor Crater in Arizona. Evolutionists believe
the meteor blasted
through hardened
rock; creationists
note that the crater
looks very much
like the impact of a
bullet in soft mud.

Evolutionists
believe that
bending of
rocks occurred
millions of years
after the sediment hardened
into rock.
Creationists
believe the sediments were bent
while still soft.

Which makes more sense?
Photos by the author

The Grand Cayman Islands: A Natural
Demonstration Project
South of Cuba are the Grand Cayman islands, where four distinct
ecological communities thrive at the same time and place.
0-200 ft: The Reef. Thousands of typical
shallow water species: Coral, barracuda,
stingray, eels, etc.
200-600 ft: The Wall. “Sponge belt.” Lots
of various types of sponges. Worms,
crustaceans.
600-1000 ft: The Haystacks. (Lots of debris broken off from above.) Sharks, starfish, sea whip corals, sea urchins, etc.
1000+ ft: The Deep. (Totally dark.) Cookiecutter shark, coffin fish, tripod fish, spideryarmed jellyfish, sea cucumbers, etc.

If we could instantly freeze the area, it would look just like
the suites of fossils in the fossil record.

Ecological Communities Around the World
Animals and plants live in interdependent communities, or biomes.
These vary with climate, elevation above or below sea level, etc.

Shown are two of
the ecosystems
found in Colorado.
The same is true
worldwide.
(Denver Museum of Natural
History – photos by the
author)

HOW EVOLUTIONISTS DATE ROCKS
ASSUME EVOLUTION
IS CORRECT
Fossils must
show progression from
simple to
complex

C

R

Geologic timetable
and “correct” order
of strata verified Evolution Proved!

E
A

I

R
Arrange C
strata on
U
a chart in
“correct” L
order
A

S
O
N

Look for
“tie-points”
where radiometric ages
match previously assigned age;
reject ages that don’t
fit (almost all!)

I
R

Explain
away out-of-order
fossils and strata

N
G

HOW AGES WERE ORIGINALLY ASSIGNED
1. If a new fossil was previously unknown, it would be compared
to the rocks where it was found to see if they contained a
known suite of fossils (Cambrian, Devonian, etc.). If so, the
new one was assigned the same age as that suite.
2. Even if there was not a full suite, the discoverer would look for
individual fossils found nearby. If any of them were defined as
“index fossils,” he simply used their previously assigned age
for the new type.
3. If none of the other fossils had been assigned an age, he would
decide how highly evolved the new organism was and assign
an age based on the assumption that evolution had taken
billions of years.
4. Finally, if the new fossil was found in only one suite, then it
could be used as an index fossil and its assigned age used
anywhere that suite was found. Any new fossils found in the
same layer would automatically be assigned the same age.

What About Radioactive Dating?
Electrons (-) are in orbitals around the
nucleus, which
is composed of protons (+)
and neutrons
(neutral,
shown in blue).
Number of
neutrons deter- mines the isotope
of the element.

-

+ +
+
+ +

-

Number of protons
is the atomic
number.
This determines
what element
the atom is.

-

-

Number of
protons plus
number of
neutrons determines the mass
number of the element.

Since protons are positively charged, they repel each other. Thus, every
atom in the universe that has more than one proton should fly apart.
However, if certain numbers of neutrons are present, the protons stay
together. Scientists call the force that keeps them together the
“Strong Nuclear Force,” but have no idea why it exists.

WHAT IS RADIOACTIVITY?
An atom with an unstable nucleus
(too many or too few neutrons for the number of
protons) tries to re- lease excess potential energy by emitting various particles, or releasing
+ +
+
gamma radiation.
+ +

-

In Alpha (a) decay, the
nucleus ejects two protons and two neutrons at the same time. This lowers
the atomic number by two
and the mass number by four.

In Beta (b) decay, one of
the neutrons in the nucleus breaks apart. It
ejects a high-energy
electron, leaving a
proton in place of
- the neutron. This
actually increases
the atomic number
by one, but leaves
the mass number
unchanged.

-

The radioactive atom starts out as one element called the parent and
decays into a different element called the radiogenic daughter.
The daughter may or may not be radioactive.
If the daughter is radioactive, it may in turn become the parent
element of another radiogenic daughter.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
Some radioactive
“parents” decay
into their final
“daughter” in one
step, e.g. Carbon14 to Nitrogen-14.
Others go through
many intermediates, e.g. Uranium238 goes through
14 steps as it turns
into Lead-206.

However, we do
not know what
causes one atom
to decay while
the one next to it
does not, so we
cannot predict
which individual
atoms will decay.

To measure decay rates we average together large numbers of atoms
in a statistical analysis called a “half-life,” the amount of time it takes
for half of a sample to decay. After one half-life 1/2 remains; after two
half-lives, 1/4; after three, 1/8; after four, 1/16, and so forth.

RADIOACTIVE DECAY RATES
COMMONLY USED RADIOACTIVE DATING METHODS
PARENT
Carbon-14
Potassium-40
Uranium-235
Uranium-238
Rubidium-87

DAUGHTER
Nitrogen-14
Argon-40
Lead-207
Lead-206
Strontium-87

HALF-LIFE
5730 years
1.3 billion years
713 million years
4.51 billion years
47 billion years

Half-lives range from microseconds to (supposedly)
billions of years.
Since radioactivity was only discovered about a century ago,
there is no way to verify long half-lives.

Characteristics of an Accurate Clock
1. Initial conditions known.
What time did the clock say when it
was wound up?

2. Known rate of change.
The clock need not always run at the
same rate, but if it changes we must
know when and by how much.

3. Closed system.
The clock must not have been reset
or tampered with.
Since we can’t be sure of any of these for any “clock” in nature, we should
use many different methods to determine a maximum possible age.
Out of all the dating methods, less than 10% point toward a maximum of
billions of years. The rest point toward millions or even thousands.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.
The radioactive parents came from
somewhere. According to evolution, the
daughters could have been present to use
as building blocks in making the parents in
the first place. There would automatically
have been a mix of daughter and parent
from the beginning of the earth. We have no
way to know what that mix was. This renders
radioactive dating unreliable.

Periodic Table of the Elements

1

H

HYDROGEN
1
3

4

5

Li Be
LITHIUM
7
11

7

B C

BERYLLIUM
9
12

BORON
11
13

Na Mg
SODIUM
23
19

6

MAGNESIUM
24
20
21

CARBON
12
14

N

NITROGEN
14
15

8

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

SILICON
28
32

He
9

HELIUM
4
10

O F Ne

OXYGEN
16
16

Al Si P
ALUMINUM
27
31

2

FLUORINE
19
17

NEON

20
18

S Cl Ar

PHOSPHOROUS SULPHUR
31
32
33
34

CHLORINE
35
35

ARGON
40

36

K Ca Sc Ti V Cr Mn Fe Co Ni Cu Zn Ga Ge As Se Br Kr

POTASSIUM
39
37

CALCIUM
40
38

SCANDIUM
45
39

TITANIUM
48
40

VANADIUM
51
41

CHROMIUM
51
42

MANGANESE IRON
55
56
43
44

COBALT
58
45

NICKEL
59
46

COPPER
64
47

ZINC

65
48

GALLIUM
70
49

GERMANIUM ARSENIC
73
75
50
51

SELENIUM
79
52

BROMINE
80
53

KRYPTON
84
54

Rb Sr Y Zr Nb Mo Tc Ru Rh Pd Ag Cd In Sn Sb Te I Xe
RUBIDIUM
85
55

STRONTIUM
88
56

Cs Ba
CESIUM
133
87

BARIUM
137
88

Fr Ra
FRANCIUM
223

RADIUM
226

YTTRIUM
89

La-Lu
57- 71
Ac-Lr
89-103

ZIRCONIUM
91
72

NIOBIUM
93
73

MOLYBDENUM TECHNETIUM RUTHENIUM RHODIUM
96
99
101
103
74
75
76
77

PALLADIUM SILVER
106
108
78
79

CADMIUM
112
80

INDIUM
115
81

TIN

119
82

ANTIMONY TELLURIUM IODINE
122
126
127
83
84
85

XENON
131
86

Hf Ta W Re Os Ir Pt Au Hg Tl Pb Bi Po At Rn
HAFNIUM
178
104

TANTALUM
181
105

TUNGSTEN
184
106

RHENIUM
186
107

OSMIUM
190
108

IRIDIUM
192
109

PLATINUM
195

Rf Db Sg Bh Hs Mt

RUTHERFORD- DUBNIUM
IUM 261
262

SEABORGIUM BOHRIUM
263
264

HASSIUM
265

GOLD

MERCURY
201

197

THALLIUM
204

LEAD

BISMUTH
209

207

POLONIUM
210

ASTATINE
219

RADON

222

etc.

MEITNERIUM
268

57

La

LANTHANUM
139
89

Ac

ACTINIUM
227

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

71

Ce Pr Nd Pm Sm Eu Gd Tb Dy Ho E Tm Yb Lu

90

CERIUM
140

PRASEODYM- NEODYMIUM PROMETHEUM SAMARIUM EUROPIUM
IUM 141
144
147
147
152
91
92
93
94
95

THORIUM
232

PROTACTINURANIUM
IUM
231
238

GADOLINIUM
157

96

TERBIUM
159

DYSPROSIUM HOLMIUM
ERBIUM
162
165
167
99
100

THULIUM
169

YTTERBIUM
173

102

LUTETIUM
175

97

98

101

103

BERKELIUM
247

CALIFORNIUM EINSTEINIUM FERMIUM
251
252
257

MENDELEVNOBELIUM LAWRENCIUM
IUM 258
259
260

Th Pa U Np Pu Am Cm Bk Cf Es Fm Md No Lr
NEPTUNIUM PLUTONIUM
237
244

AMERICIUM
243

CURIUM
247

90 elements are known to occur on earth. Elements 43, 61, and 93 and above (shown in
red) are known only in artificially manufactured form, though #43 is seen in some stars.
According to evolution, the 90 naturally occurring elements (shown in white)
must have come from lighter “building blocks.”

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

Changes in Radioactive Decay Rates
• Published decay rates are averages of experimental
values. Some are a little lower, some are a little higher.
• Decay rates have been determined over less than 100
years but are applied to 4.5 billion years! This is like
watching a jet fly past for one second then guessing how
fast it has been flying for the last 522 days.
• Many believe the decay of individual atoms is purely
random, but others believe there is some as-yet-unknown
cause such as neutrino density.
• Experiments have produced changes in decay rates of at
least 14 different elements.
• Under plasma conditions (all electrons removed), decay
rates have been accelerated up to a billion times as fast.
Evolutionists (and some creationists) believe
the earth began in plasma conditions.
This would render radiometric dating totally unreliable.

Conditions for Accurate Radiometric Dating
Most rocks contain a mixture of elements. Many include a
radioactive “parent” and a radiogenic “daughter.”
1. Initial percentage of parent and
daughter in the rock must be known.
We have no way to know this.

2. Rate of change must have been
constant the entire time.
We’ve been watching for less than 100
years, but we have seen half-lives change
by up to a billion times as fast.

3. None of the parent or daughter can have
been added or removed the entire time.
Is there any rock that has never gotten wet?

There is no way to be sure of any of these factors,
let alone all of them.

Potassium-Argon Dating
1. The elements potassium (K) and calcium (Ca) are abundant in
the earth’s rocks.
2. K comes in three isotopes: K-39 and K-41, both stable, make up
over 99.9% of the known potassium. The unstable K-40 makes
up just over 0.01% and has a half-life of about 1.26 billion years.
3. Almost 89% of the time K-40 decays into Ca-40, useless for
dating because it also occurs as a non-radiogenic element.
4. The other 11% of the time K-40 decays into the inert gas Ar-40,
used for K-Ar dating because it can be trapped inside a rock.
5. Rocks are assumed to have formed in a molten state, then
solidified after hundreds of millions of years of cooling.
6. Any Ar-40 in molten rock would have leaked out. Thus, we use
the ratio of K-40 to Ar-40 to determine how long ago the rock
solidified.

PROBLEM: If the rock ever heated up enough to soften again
(e.g., after a volcanic eruption), more Ar-40 could leak out and
give ages that are wrong by billions of years!

HOW ABOUT CARBON DATING?
1. Cosmic radiation in the upper
atmosphere strikes Nitrogen-14,
turning it into the unstable isotope
Carbon-14.

2. Plants use the
C-12 and C-14
in the air to
build up their
cell
structures.

3. The carbon
becomes
part of the
animals
that eat
the plants.

4. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in carbon. The C-12
does not change but the
C-14 decays back to
N-14 (with a half-life of
5730 years).
By measuring the ratio
of C-14 to C-12
in the carcass as compared to the
atmosphere, we estimate how long ago it died.

PROBLEMS WITH CARBON DATING
1. The carbon in many fossils has been replaced by other
minerals.
You can’t carbon date something that doesn’t contain carbon.

2. If the animal or plant’s environment was low in C-14 it will
give a false reading much higher than the real age.
This happens frequently in sea creatures.

3. The ratio of C-14 to C-12 in the atmosphere keeps
increasing.
The older something is, the less C-14 was available and the less reliable
the carbon date is. “Old” dates need to be adjusted accordingly.

4. Because of its short half-life, carbon dating works for ages
of only a few thousand years.
Since most fossils are supposed to be millions of years old,
evolutionists don’t even try to carbon date them.

5. External factors can add or remove carbon or nitrogen.
6. Some plants are able to exclude C-14 from their structures.
They, or anything that eats them, would automatically show
a false age.

Reasons Fossils are not Dated by
Other Radiometric Methods
1. A good size sample of radioactive material is
needed to perform radiometric dating tests.
The particles in most sediments are too finely
divided for reliable testing.
2. The only kind of radioactive material that can
be directly dated is igneous (volcanic) rock. It
would have been so hot when it was laid down
that it would have destroyed any living thing in
its path, rather than preserving it as a fossil.

Examples of Erroneous Radiometric Dates
• Checkurovka Mammoth: Hair carbon dated at 26,000 years, but soil dated
only 5,600 years.
• Living Nevada snails carbon dated at 27,000 years.
• Living mollusk dated by carbon-14 at over 2,300 years.
• Two different C-14 ages 15,000 years apart from same block of peat in New
Zealand
• Dried seal carcasses less than 30 years old carbon dated as old as 4,600
years.
• Blood of seal freshly killed at McMurdo Sound in Antarctic carbon dated at
1,300 years
• Rocks containing “Nutcracker Man” potassium-argon dated at 1.75 million
years. Bones found lower (should be older) carbon dated at 10,000 years.
• Lava rocks from Hualalei in Hawaii potassium-argon dated at almost 3
billion years. Rocks less than 200 years old - formed when volcano
erupted in 1801.
• Other new Hawaiian rocks from eruption of Kilauea potassium-argon
dated at 22 million years.
• Moon rocks dated by various techniques show inconsistent ages ranging
from 700 million to 28 billion years. (Moon supposed to be 4.5 billion years
old.)

RECENT CARBON DATING RESULTS
Recently developed tests for Carbon-14 using accelerator mass
spectrometry are able to detect the presence of C-14 at 100,000
times lower concentration than previous methods.
Out of thousands of supposedly multimillion year samples
tested, all but two contained measurable amounts of C-14.
Radioactive elements disappear within about 10 half-lives. Even
if we are generous and stretch the limit out to 40 half-lives,
within about 250,000 years all the C-14 should be gone.
IT IS NOT.
The “multimillion year” fossils must be
less than 250,000 years old!
In fact, in most cases, they point to something less than 90,000
years (before correction for lower atmospheric C-14 in the past).

Isochron Dating – The Latest and Greatest
Isochrons are an attempt to eliminate the need
to know initial parent-to-daughter ratios.
They use a
radioactive element
(e.g., Rb-87) and two
isotopes of the
element it decays
into: one radiogenic
(e.g., Sr-87) and one
naturally occurring
(e.g., Sr-86).

Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

As the amount of the radioactive element decreases compared to
the naturally occurring one, the radiogenic daughter should
increase correspondingly.
The ratio of radioactive-to-radiogenic in multiple rock samples is
graphed on one axis, and the ratio of radiogenic-tonatural is shown on the other.

PROBLEMS WITH ISOCHRON DATING
Ratio of
Sr-87
(radiogenic)
to Sr - 86
(naturally
occurring)

1. Starts with the invalid assumption that rocks come out of volcanoes
perfectly mixed.
2. We arbitrarily assign a meaning to the slope of the line. It could
represent billions, millions, or thousands of years - but it could also
be meaningless.
3. In some cases, the slope of the line is negative -- indicating the
impossible situation of a negative age.
4. If the non-radiogenic element was ever added or removed from any
of the samples, the technique is useless.

Isochron Dating and the Grand Canyon
The
Cardeñas
Basalt at the
bottom of
the Grand
Canyon is
supposed to
be about a
billion years
old.

The
Uinkaret
Plateau
at the top
is only
supposed to
be about
a million.

Rubidium-Strontium dating showed an age of about 1.07 billion
years for the Cardeñas, as expected.
Exactly the same technique was applied to the Uinkaret, which
showed an age of 1.34 billion years -- a thousand times too old,
and 270 million years older than the rocks at the bottom.
EIther the technique is faulty, or else the Grand Canyon is upside down!

RADIOMETRIC “TIE-POINTS”
IF stratigraphic ages are really correct, and
IF radiometric dating is reliable,
Then we should be able to find a multitude of “tie-points” -igneous (volcanic) rocks that match the assigned
stratigraphic ages of each sedimentary layer containing
fossils.
However, evolutionists do not depend on tie-points because
there are so few of them.
A search of the literature reveals that In the entire world, only
a hundred or so individual rocks (tie-points) have been
found that match their assigned ages. The thousands of
others (the vast majority) that don’t match the age that
evolution says they should be are DISCARDED.
Instead of discarding the theory when it doesn’t match the
data, evolutionists DISCARD THE DATA because it doesn’t
match the theory!

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
We’ve seen that the first two are not reliable. Now
let’s look at some arguments based on geology.

FOSSIL PREDICTIONS OF
CREATION AND EVOLUTION
EVOLUTION:

CREATION:

Uniformitarianism.
“The present is the key to the
past” -- a doctrinal statement
accepted without proof.

Catastrophism.
Everyday processes do not
have nearly so much effect on
the earth as catastrophic events
(volcanos, hurricanes,
earthquakes, etc.) The present
is NOT the key to the past.
There should be evidence in the
geologic record pointing toward
past catastrophic events.

Presently observed processes
should be sufficient to explain
the earth’s geologic record.
There has never been a
worldwide flood.

THE FOUNDATION OF EVOLUTION:
Uniformitarianism.
This is the UNPROVABLE geological doctrine that everything happens by
slow, gradual, uniform processes. (“The present is the key to the past.”)
There can never have been a worldwide flood.

The Bible warns us:
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers
will come in the last days with scoffing, following their
own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his
coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things
have continued as they were from the beginning of
creation.
They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of
God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out
of water and by means of water, through which the
world that then existed was deluged with water and
perished. (2 Peter 3:3-7 RSV)

PLATE TECTONICS
Genesis 1:9-10 says that
there was originally
one landmass. On
this, evolutionists
agree. (They call it
Pangaea.) Evolutionists believe it broke
up over hundreds of
millions of years.

By contrast, youngearth creationists
believe the split
took place rapidly,
during and after
Noah’s Flood.
Animation from Univ. of Calif. Museum of Paleontology website http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu

Geologists around the world use a computer program called
“Terra” to model the motion of the continental plates.
Few realize that it was written by a young-earth creationist
geophysicist, Dr. John Baumgardner.
The program works much better if the continents were moving
rapidly for a short time rather than slowly for millions of years.

THE GRAND CANYON

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, eight
miles across, and over 200 miles long.
Evolutionists claim that the Colorado River
would have taken millions of years to erode
the Canyon.
Is there any evidence that the assumption
of uniformitarianism is wrong, and that
large scale erosion can occur quickly?

Mount St. Helens

A classic snow-capped mountain in southwest
Washington State, before its eruption in 1980
Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman
(www.creationism.org/sthelens/fleshman/index.htm)

The View From Spirit Lake
Mount St. Helens before

Mount St. Helens after

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Effects of the Volcano on Trees
Millions of trees were knocked
down by the initial steam blast.

USGS Photo

(Photo courtesy of Raymond Fleshman)

1/8 of a cubic mile of rock from the top of the volcano
crashed into Spirit Lake, creating a wave hundreds of
feet high that swept down millions more trees. Shown
above are not islands, but floating log rafts.

Mount St. Helens During the Eruption
Ash from Mt. St. Helens completely circled the globe.

U.S. Geologic Survey photos from
www.creationism.org/sthelens/USGS1250/index.htm

Energy released from this medium-sized volcano was estimated to be the
equivalent of one Hiroshima-size atomic bomb per second for nine hours.

Mount St. Helens and the Toutle River
• The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited
hundreds of feet of finely laminated sediment into the
North Fork of the Toutle River in just a few days.
• The sediment was so hot that it quickly turned into
rock, damming up the river.
• 20 months later, a new mudflow broke through the
new rocks and carved out a canyon about 1/35 as
deep as the Grand Canyon in ONE DAY.

The Toutle River didn’t carve the
canyon; it just drains it.
(Just like the Colorado River and the
Grand Canyon!)

Sediment Deposits at Mount St. Helens

Photos courtesy of Raymond Fleshman

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 deposited hundreds of feet of
finely laminated sediment into the North Fork of the Toutle River in
just a few days.

Soft Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens
The 1980 eruption filled the Toutle River valley with hundreds of
feet of superheated mud, which rapidly hardened into rock.

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from two
miles
away

A second eruption in January 1982 sent more superheated mud blasting
through the new sedimentary rock, forming a network of canyons up
to 160 feet deep (1/35 as deep as the Grand Canyon) in one day.
The Toutle didn’t carve the canyons -- it just drains them.

Hard Rock Erosion at Mount St. Helens

Photo
by the
author
-viewed
from
three
miles
away

Hard rock erosion is thought to take thousands of years, at least.
Yet the steam blast during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens carved
out a 700 foot deep canyon through the solid granite of the
“Goat Rocks” in less than one afternoon.

Back to the Grand Canyon – could it be the
Result of Slow Erosion?

U.S. government satellite image

The Grand Canyon is a mile deep, 8 mile wide, 216 mile long gash
through an uplifted area of the Colorado Plateau in north Arizona.

The
Kaibab
Monocline,
a milehigh
upwarped
formation
at the east
end of the
Grand
Canyon

In order for the Colorado River to have carved the Canyon, it
would have had to flow a mile uphill for millions of years.
Impossible. Gravity works in Arizona just like anywhere else!

THE MISSING DELTA
The Grand
Canyon is
missing over
1000 cubic
miles of
sediment,
enough to
make a good
size mountain
range. Yet it
has a normalsize delta
composed of
soft, relatively
recent
sediment.

NASA
satellite
photo
of the
Colorado
River
delta
at the
Gulf of
California

If the Colorado River carved the Canyon over millions
of years, where is the sediment?

The Colorado River: Not Enough Water!
Throughout the Grand Canyon are many mesas and
buttes where the Colorado River does not flow.

Photo by the author

There had to be a much larger quantity of water at
some time in the past in order to scour them out.

Nautiloid Mass Burial at Grand Canyon
The Redwall Limestone is a layer of the Grand Canyon several
hundred feet thick, spread over thousands of square miles.
Uniformitarian geology says
the Redwall
Limestone
was deposited slowly
over hundreds of
millions of
years.
In 2002, geologist Dr. Steve Austin stunned the Geological Society of
America with the discovery of billions of nautiloid fossils preserved in a 2meter thick layer of the Redwall Limestone.
Nautiloids have soft bodies inside a shell. The bodies decay quickly.
The shells all point in the same direction. This indicates that
they were deposited by a massive sediment flow over
a few days, not millions of years.

Grand Canyon photo by the author; Nautiloid photos by USGS

THE PETRIFIED FOREST

Not far from the Grand Canyon -- not really a forest, but
tens of thousands of trees and tree fragments lying on
the ground, stripped of roots and limbs.
Most geologists believe they are allochthonous – that is,
they floated into the area from someplace else.
That’s a lot of water!

The Grand
Canyon
and the
Flood
The Kaibab
Monocline
would have
served as a
natural dam
holding back
four states
worth of water
at the end of
the Flood, until
something
caused a split.
The Colorado
didn’t carve
the Canyon; it
just drains it.

The
Colorado
Plateau
east of the
Grand
Canyon
includes
many
parts of
Utah,
Colorado,
Arizona,
and New
Mexico
higher
than the
Kaibab
Monocline.
(U.S.
government
satellite image)

The Failure of Uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism is based on the belief that “The Present is
the Key to the Past.” Even according to evolution, though,
many things have obviously not always happened in the
same way and at the same rate.
• The hypothetical “big bang”
• Initial formation of the earth
and solar system
• Initial separation of the
continents
• Supposed reversal of motion
of the continental plates
• Well-known catastrophes
such as Washington Scablands, meteor impacts,

major volcanic eruptions
• Reversals of the earth’s
magnetic field
• Clearly defined boundaries
between strata
worldwide (e.g.,
K-T Boundary)
• Enormous fossil graveyards
• Many other examples

“Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science
was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm.”
- Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould

REASONS PEOPLE BELIEVE
THE EARTH IS OLD:
1. Belief that it takes millions of years
to form a fossil.
2. Radiometric dating.
3. Geologic features (separation of continents, Grand Canyon, etc.) that are
supposed to have taken millions of
years to form.
None of these is a
compelling argument.

So far, this is just showing
what’s wrong with the
evolutionary time scale.
Are there any positive
indications that the earth might
be much younger than billions
of years old?

Maximum Ages Given by a Number of “Clocks”
INDICATOR

MAX. AGE

1. Recession of the Moon
1,370,000,000
2. Breakup of Galaxy Clusters
1,000,000,000
3. Spiral Galaxies
1,000,000,000
4. Influx of salt (NaCl) to the oceans
100,000,000
5. Thickness and temperature gradient of earth’s crust
45,000,000
6. Atmospheric helium
4,000,000
7. Instability of Saturn’s rings
1,000,000
8. Volcanic activity on Io
1,000,000
9. Poynting-Robertson Effect on space dust
200,000
10. High pressure oil & gas wells
100,000
11. Thickness of Nile sediment
30,000
12. Atmospheric C-14
30,000
13. Influx of salt to the Dead Sea
13,000
14. Short-period comets
10,000
15. Decay in strength of earth’s magnetic field
10,000
16. Influx of Uranium to the oceans
10,000
and many others.

The true age could be anything less.

THE MISSING HELIUM
Several radioactive decay
series release
alpha particles, or
Helium-4 nuclei.
These quickly
capture two electrons from their
surroundings and
become Helium
atoms.

If every bit of the
helium in the
atmosphere
came only from
the radioactive
decay we are
aware of, there is
less than 4
million years
accumulation.

There is no way known for helium-4 to escape from the atmosphere.

1. If there was any helium at the beginning, or
2. If there is more radioactivity than we know of, or
3. If there is another helium source besides radioactivity,
The atmosphere could be any age less.

CARBON-14 DECAY
Cosmic radiation strikes Nitrogen-14 in the upper atmosphere,
turning it into C-14. The C-14 begins to turn back to N-14.

Starting from zero, the amount of C-14 would build up until it
was decaying as fast as it formed. At present rates, it would
take less than 20,000 years to reach equilibrium.

Direct measurements show C-14 forming 20% to 30% faster
than it is decaying. This indicates that C-14 has been
forming for less than 20,000 years.
The atmosphere must have been in its present condition for
less than 20,000 years.

THE MISSING METEORITES
• Each year, a few meteorites
make it through the atmosphere and land on the earth
without burning up.
• Fossil-bearing rocks are supposed to have been forming
for at least 530 million years.
• In this time, at least several
billion meteorites should have
become embedded one by one in the fossil-bearing rocks.
• Yet not one meteorite has ever been discovered preserved in
any “ancient” rock layer under the surface, despite the
discovery of perhaps hundreds of billions of fossils.

Either this is an astonishing coincidence, or else the rocks
were NOT laid down over hundreds of millions of years.

METEOR CRATER
The meteor that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona went
through multiple strata, but did not fracture them.

Instead, the crater looks like the impact pattern of a
bullet fired into soft mud. All the layers must have
still been soft when the meteor crashed through.
They must not have been millions of years old.

PLEOCHROIC HALOES
If a large number of radioactive atoms decay inside a
molten rock, no traces are left after the rock cools.
However, if the rock is solid when the atoms decay, they leave tiny
spherical “scorch marks” known as pleochroic haloes. We can tell what
produced the haloes by their diameter and what’s left at the center.
SHELLS DUE TO:
Po-214 (half-life 164 microseconds)
Po-218 (half-life 3.1 minutes)
Po-210 (half-life 138 days)
U-238 “parent” (4.5 billion years)
No Uranium “Parent”

“Parentless” Po-210 haloes can only form
in rocks that are solid within a few years, Po-218 within
a few minutes, and Po-214 within a few thousandths of a second.

Thousands of known haloes are from fast-decaying isotopes of
Polonium. In order for them to leave haloes at all, the rocks
must have solidified within a few half-lives of Polonium.
For Po-214, the rocks had to harden within seconds!

Implications of Pleochroic Haloes
Pleochroic haloes do not prove that the earth
is young. However, they show that rocks containing them had to solidify in a matter of seconds rather than hundreds of millions of years.
Whenever the basement rocks were
formed, they were formed fast.

No one has ever successfully rebutted Dr.
Robert Gentry’s contention that the haloes
point strongly toward
instantaneous creation.

HELIUM IN THE ROCKS
• Many radioactive decay series produce helium.
• Even though the helium starts out inside a rock, helium
molecules are so small that they can gradually work
their way through the molecules of the rock until they
escape.
• At the measured rate of diffusion, the escape time has
been calculated to be on the order of a few tens of
thousands of years.
• Many rocks supposed to be hundreds of millions of
years old have been split open and found to contain
significant amounts of helium.

The rocks cannot be more than a few
tens of thousands of years old,
NOT millions of years.

DOES THIS PROVE THE EARTH
IS YOUNG?
NO.

BUT IT SHOWS THAT IT COULD BE,
AND THAT THERE IS NO
COMPELLING SCIENTIFIC REASON
THAT IT HAS TO BE BILLIONS OF
YEARS OLD.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PREMISE OF EVOLUTION:
EVERYTHING must be explainable by
PURELY NATURAL PROCESSES.
(If something is a physical phenomenon,
then it must have a physical cause.)

But what if evolutionists find something that
is NOT explainable by natural processes?
Sure it is -- they just make up an explanation!
And since they are smart enough to make up a
clever story, therefore their story must be true.

THE CREATIONIST’S ADVANTAGE:
Since evolutionsts are determined that
absolutely EVERYTHING must be explainable
by purely natural processes, all it takes is ONE
THING that’s not to falsify all of evolution.
All we have to do is disprove ONE evolutionary claim, but they have to be right about
EVERY SINGLE ONE. If even one evolutionary
story is wrong, the whole thing falls apart!
No wonder they don’t want students to hear
about Intelligent Design in schools!

For copies of all
materials, go to
www.originsresource.org
or
www.mrprentice.com.