googlef87758e9b6df9bec.html A Sure Word: Watching an “old-earth” crumble

Thursday, December 6, 2007

Watching an “old-earth” crumble

The lynchpin of evolution is an old earth. The simple fact is this - if the earth were only 6,000 years old, there has not been enough time for anything to have evolved. Evolutionists, on the other hand, believe the earth is around 4.5 billion years old. How do they arrive at that conclusion? There are several methods evolutionists use to estimate the age of the earth and they all revolve around different processes. For example, uranium decays into lead at an observed rate. When a lab tests a sample of an unknown age, they can observe the present ratio of uranium/lead and calculate how long they believe it took for that ratio to be reached at the present rate of decay. There are several assumptions and certain limitations to this kind of dating which we’ll discuss in another blog.

There are hundreds of processes occurring right now that we could look at to estimate the age of the earth. The dirty secret that evolutionists won’t tell you is that many of them yield ages far too young for ToE to be true.

One process I’d like to discuss here is erosion. Erosion is observed all the time in the form of mudslides, rockslides, avalanches, floods, etc. Water and wind work together with gravity to wear down mountains, prairies, and beaches. It happens faster in some places than others, but it happens everywhere.

Here are a few facts about erosion:

> “The original Niagara Falls were near the sites of present-day Queenston, Ontario, and Lewiston, New York, but erosion of their crest has caused the waterfalls to retreat several miles southward.” (source Wikipedia )

> “It has been estimated that the Mississippi River annually carries 406 million tons of sediment to the sea.” (source Wikipedia)

> “Cape Shoalwater, WA, about 70 miles west of Olympia, has been eroding at the rate of more than 100 ft. a year since the turn of the century; its sparsely settled sand dunes have retreated an astounding 12,000 ft., or more than two miles, since 1910.” (source Time)

Here’s the fatal blow to evolution: at the present, observed rate of erosion, the entire continent of North America would be worn down to sea level in only 10 million years!! If the earth were billions of years old, there should not be any continents left!

Now, there are other forces at play such as plate tectonics – formerly known as “continental drift”. When one plate meets another at a plate boundary, certain topographical features are created, such as mountains. So, even as mountains are worn away, new ones are pushed up. However, this doesn’t solve the problem. You see, some scientists claim they have fossils from these rock layers that are tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years old. But how can that be true? If mountains are continuously pushed up and worn down, then all the rock layers are being replaced every 10 million years. How then can there be any fossil in them that is more than 10 million years old?

It should be pointed out that erosion only establishes an upper-limit to the age of the earth. It does not mean the earth is 10 million years old. Indeed, if the present rate of erosion has been occurring since Noah’s Flood, then the effect of erosion has been negligible.

So the next time you see a news story about mudslides in California or read about measures to combat shoreline erosion, you’ll know that you’re watching the idea of an old earth crumble!

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