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Evidence for a Young Worldby D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.
http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=1842
Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the Biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the Biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation. 1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called "density waves."1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the "Whirlpool" galaxy, M51.2 2. Too few supernova remnants.
According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3 3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it. 4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago. 5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field ("dipole" and "non-dipole") is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15 7. Many strata are too tightly bent.In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.16 8. Biological material decays too fast.
Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 "Orphan" Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.23,24 10. Too much helium in minerals.Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously. 11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.
Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas. 13. Agriculture is too recent.The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31
14. History is too short. According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely.31 References
Additional Resources for items 9-11.
*Dr. Humphreys is an Associate Professor of Physics at ICR.
The Vanishing Case for Evolutionby Henry Morris, Ph.D.* Dr. Henry M. Morris, father of the modern creation science movement, devoted his life to upholding the accuracy and authority of God’s Word. Combining scientific knowledge with a thorough understanding of Scripture, he clearly and succinctly combated the errors of evolution. In the article below, Dr. Morris highlights evolution’s false claims, using the words of evolutionists themselves. His words are as true today as when they were first written. Evolutionary belief is a remarkable and largely unexplained phenomenon. It is a belief held by most intellectuals all over the world, despite the fact that there is no real scientific evidence for it at all. Evolutionists allege that evolution is a proved scientific fact, based on a multitude of scientific proofs, but they are unable to document even one of these supposed proofs! This curious situation is illustrated below in quotations from several leading evolutionary scientists. THE ALTOGETHER MISSING EVIDENCE No Evolution at Present The lack of a case for evolution is most clearly recognized by the fact that no one has ever seen it happen. Evolution, at least in the sense that Darwin speaks of it, cannot be detected within the lifetime of a single observer.1 "Horizontal variations" (e.g., the different varieties of dogs) are not real evolution, of course, nor are "mutations," which are always either neutral or harmful, as far as all known mutations are concerned. A process which has never been observed to occur, in all human history, should not be called scientific. No New Species Charles Darwin is popularly supposed to have solved the problem of "the origin of species," in his famous 1859 book of that title. However, as the eminent Harvard biologist Ernst Mayr, one of the nation's top evolutionists, observed: Darwin never really did discuss the origin of species in his On the Origin of Species.2 Not only could Darwin not cite a single example of a new species originating, but neither has anyone else, in all the subsequent century of evolutionary study. No one has ever produced a species by mechanisms of natural selection. No one has gotten near it.3
No Known Mechanism of Evolution It is also a very curious fact that no one understands how evolution works. Evolutionists commonly protest that they know evolution is true, but they can't seem to determine its mechanism. Evolution is...troubled from within by the troubling complexities of genetic and developmental mechanisms and new questions about the central mystery--speciation itself.4 One would think that in the 100+ years following Darwin, with thousands of trained biologists studying the problem and using millions of dollars worth of complex lab equipment, they would have worked it out by now, but the mechanism which originates new species is still "the central mystery." No Fossil Evidence It used to be claimed that the best evidence for evolution was the fossil record, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils have not yet yielded a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving. The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition.5 This ubiquitous absence of intermediate forms is true not only for "major morphologic transitions," but even for most species.
As a result, many modern evolutionists agree with the following assessment: In any case, no real evolutionist…uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation.7 No Order in the Fossils Not only are there no true transitional forms in the fossils; there is not even any general evidence of evolutionary progression in the actual fossil sequences. The fossil record of evolution is amenable to a wide variety of models ranging from completely deterministic to completely stochastic.8 I regard the failure to find a clear "vector of progress" in life's history as the most puzzling fact of the fossil record....we have sought to impose a pattern that we hoped to find on a world that does not really display it.9 The superficial appearance of an evolutionary pattern in the fossil record has actually been imposed on it by the fact that the rocks containing the fossils have themselves been "dated" by their fossils. And this poses something of a problem: If we date the rocks by their fossils, how can we then turn around and talk about patterns of evolutionary change through time in the fossil record?10 A circular argument arises: Interpret the fossil record in the terms of a particular theory of evolution, inspect the interpretation, and note that it confirms the theory. Well, it would, wouldn't it?11 No Evidence That Evolution Is Possible The basic reason why there is no scientific evidence of evolution in either the present or the past is that the law of increasing entropy, or the second law of thermodynamics, contradicts the very premise of evolution. The evolutionist assumes that the whole universe has evolved upward from a single primeval particle to human beings, but the second law (one of the best-proved laws of science) says that the whole universe is running down into complete disorder. How can the forces of biological development and the forces of physical degeneration be operating at cross purposes? It would take, of course, a far greater mind than mine even to attempt to penetrate this riddle. I can only pose the question.12 Evolutionists commonly attempt to sidestep this question by asserting that the second law applies only to isolated systems. But this is wrong! [T]he quantity of entropy generated locally cannot be negative irrespective of whether the system is isolated or not.13 Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems.14 Entropy can be forced to decrease in an open system, if enough organizing energy and information is applied to it from outside the system. This externally introduced complexity would have to be adequate to overcome the normal internal increase in entropy when raw energy is added from outside. However, no such external source of organized and energized information is available to the supposed evolutionary process. Raw solar energy is not organized information! No Evidence from Similarities The existence of similarities between organisms--whether in external morphology or internal biochemistry--is easily explained as the Creator's design of similar systems for similar functions, but such similarities are not explicable by common evolutionary descent. It is now clear that the pride with which it was assumed that the inheritance of homologous structures from a common ancestor explained homology was misplaced.15 The really significant finding that comes to light from comparing the proteins' amino acid sequences is that it is impossible to arrange them in any sort of an evolutionary series.16 No Recapitulation or Vestigial Organs The old arguments for evolution based on the recapitulation theory (the idea that embryonic development in the womb recapitulates the evolution of the species) and vestigial organs ("useless" organs believed to have been useful in an earlier stage of evolution) have long been discredited. [T]he theory of recapitulation...should be defunct today.17 An analysis of the difficulties in unambiguously identifying functionless structures...leads to the conclusion that "vestigial organs" provide no evidence for evolutionary theory.18 THE RESIDUAL CASE FOR EVOLUTION In spite of these admissions, all the scientists quoted above continued to believe in evolution. Limited space precludes giving the full context of each quotation, but each point noted is fully warranted in context, and could be further documented from other authorities also.19 What, then, remains of the case for evolution? Stephen Gould falls back on what he believes are "imperfections" in nature. If there were no imperfections, there would be no evidence to favor evolution by natural selection over creation.20 But this is essentially the same as the old discredited argument from vestigial organs, and merely assumes our present ignorance to be knowledge. Even if there are imperfections in nature (as well as harmful mutations, vestigial organs, extinctions, etc.) such trends are opposite to any imaginary evolutionary progress, so can hardly prove evolution. There is one final argument, however: Gould's fellow atheist and Marxist at Harvard, geneticist Richard Lewontin, said: No one has ever found an organism that is known not to have parents, or a parent. This is the strongest evidence on behalf of evolution.21 That is, if one denies a Creator, the existence of life proves evolution! But apart from its necessity as a support for atheism or pantheism, there is clearly no scientific evidence for evolution. The absence of evidence for evolution does not, by itself, prove creation, of course; nevertheless, special creation is clearly the only alternative to evolution. Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from pre-existing species by some process of modification. If they did appear in a fully developed state, they must have been created by some omnipotent intelligence.22 While we admittedly cannot prove creation, it is important to note that all the above facts offered as evidence against evolution (gaps between kinds, no evolutionary mechanism, increasing entropy, etc.) are actual predictions from the creation "model"! Creationists prefer the reasonable faith of creationism, which is supported by all the real scientific evidence, to the credulous faith of evolutionism, which is supported by no real scientific evidence. The question remains unanswered (scientifically, at least) as to why evolutionists prefer to believe in evolution. References
Adapted from Dr. Morris' article "The Vanishing Case for Evolution" in the June 1986 edition of Acts & Facts. * Dr. Morris (1918-2006) was Founder of the Institute for Creation Research. Cite this article: Morris, H. M. 2009. The Vanishing Case for Evolution. Acts & Facts. 38 (2): 17.
Links In the interests of a balanced argument, see also How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know? Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look Index to Creationist Claims |
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Evidence for a Young World PDF
Every
year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million
tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out
of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder
simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it
would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at
today's input and output rates.10 This is much less than the
evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual
reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and
outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to
evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10
Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger
ages for the ocean.
Natural
radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material
rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced
researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized
200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17
DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000
years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from
fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from
dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old
apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and
blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20
With
their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon
older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural
source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain
significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions
or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been
aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and
are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory which has
learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate
specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such
observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be
contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very
strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions,
of years old.
