[ Young Earth ] Evidence for a Young Earth and Creation

[AIG.com]

The ten best evidences for a young earth and creation including sea floor sediment, soft tissue in fossils, carbon-14, short-lived comets, and more.

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[Barbarian]

#1: Very Little Sediment on the Seafloor

If sediments have been accumulating on the seafloor for three billion years, the seafloor should be choked with sediments many miles deep.

Subduction is constantly pushing seafloor down into the mantle, while mid-oceanic ridges are constantly making new seafloor as mantle material is pushed up.

The amount of sediment and sedimentary rock in the ocean basins is about right for the rate of subduction and ocean crust building.

 

[Barbarian]

#2: Bent Rock Layers

In many mountainous areas, rock layers thousands of feet thick have been bent and folded without fracturing. How can that happen if they were laid down separately over hundreds of millions of years and already hardened?

Hardened rock layers are brittle.

All materials are somewhat ductile. Rock just takes longer to bend than some other materials. But doesn't that mean that sometimes, the rock is bent faster than it can handle? Wouldn't there be some folds where the rock broke instead of bending?

In reality, most solid rocks are capable of either brittle or ductile deformation, depending on the conditions. Factors that determine which will happen include the type of rock, the amount and type of stress applied to the rock; lithostatic pressure (due to the weight of overlying rocks), temperature, strain rate (fast or slow deformation), type of cement holding the grains together, and fluid pressure.

At low temperatures and pressures, such as those encountered at Earth’s surface, almost all rocks deform in a brittle manner. If one applies sufficient stress to these rocks, they will break. As one goes deeper in the Earth’s crust, temperature and pressure increases, and rocks are more likely to behave in ductile rather than a brittle fashion. Some rock types can deform by folding at depths of less than one kilometer if stress is applied slowly. With increasing depth and temperature, more rock types can deform by folding rather than faulting. Yes, fracturing does happen, but there's something even more of a problem:

In reality, most solid rocks are capable of either brittle or ductile deformation, depending on the conditions. Factors that determine which will happen include the type of rock, the amount and type of stress applied to the rock; lithostatic pressure (due to the weight of overlying rocks), temperature, strain rate (fast or slow deformation), type of cement holding the grains together, and fluid pressure. The Tapeats Sandstone is presently buried beneath up to two kilometers of sediment, and was likely buried more deeply than this at the time of deformation.

At low temperatures and pressures, such as those encountered at Earth’s surface, almost all rocks deform in a brittle manner. If one applies sufficient stress to these rocks, they will break. As one goes deeper in the Earth’s crust, temperature and pressure increases, and rocks are more likely to behave in ductile rather than a brittle fashion. Some rock types can deform by folding at depths of less than one kilometer if stress is applied slowly. With increasing depth and temperature, more rock types can deform by folding rather than faulting.

2. A second problem for Snelling’s argument is that there are a variety of mechanisms by which a solid rock can bend rather than break. Think of a layer of sandstone, such as the Tapeats Sandstone at the base of the Grand Canyon Paleozoic sedimentary pile. A layer such as this can be folded without significant fracturing by several means:

1. Intergranular movement — individual sand grains slide past each other
2. Intragranular deformation — internal distortions within individual grains, often at the atomic level
3. Recrystallization — atoms are rearranged at the atomic level, often in the presence of fluids.

Six bad arguments from Answers in Genesis (Part 6)

This is part six of a six-part series examining supposed evidences for a global flood that have recently appeared on the Answers in Genesis web site. The people at AiG are my brothers and sisters i…

geochristian.com

 

[Barbarian]

#3 Soft Tissue in Fossils

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially, some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently, Schweitzer and co-workers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria.

As this suggests, there actually isn't any tissue, or even intact cells in these fossils, but there are some fragments of organic molecules left. But invertebrate paleontologists have known for a long time that such molecules can last for many millions of years in the right conditions. One such material, heme (fragment of a hemoglobin molecule) was found in a T-rex. When tested, it turned out to be more like that of a turkey than it was like the heme of other reptiles, again confirming the evolution of birds from dinosaurs.

 

[Barbarian]

#4: Faint Sun Paradox

Evidence now supports astronomers’ belief that the sun’s power comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium deep in the sun’s core, but there is a huge problem. As the hydrogen fuses, it should change the composition of the sun’s core, gradually increasing the sun’s temperature. If true, this means that the earth was colder in the past. In fact, the earth would have been below freezing 3.5 billion years ago, when life supposedly evolved.

The major problem with this one is simple: The Earth's oceans during that time, were liquid. So any analysis of that issue will have to accommodate the fact that the Earth was warm enough at that time, to have liquid water. Why that should be, is arguable, but the fact that it was that warm is not arguable. Later on, there was a worldwide freeze, so whatever was going on was not precisely calibrated for life.

The ice brought Earth to a standstill. Where there were once waves lapping onto a tropical shore and warm waters teeming with life, there was just the whistling of the wind and a cold barren landscape, covered in ice as far as the eye could see. Even at the equator – the warmest place on Earth – the average temperature was a frigid -20°C, equivalent to modern-day Antarctica. Most life was wiped out, and the creatures that did survive huddled in small pockets of open water, where hot springs continued to bubble up.

This was "Snowball Earth" – a deep freeze that began around 715 million years ago and held Earth in its icy grip for a good 120 million years. "There are no other comparable glacial periods on Earth. This one was really quite catastrophic," says Graham Shields of University College London in the UK.

Earth was a frozen Snowball when animals first evolved

715 million years ago the entire planet was encased in snow and ice. This frozen wasteland may have been the birthplace of complex animals

www.bbc.com

 

[Barbarian]

#5: Rapidly Decaying Magnetic Field

The earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that protects living things from solar radiation. Without it, life could not exist. That’s why scientists were surprised to discover that the field is quickly wearing down. At the current rate, the field and thus the earth could be no older than 20,000 years old.

Note that, from the polarity figure, at a time 0.94 million years ago (940,000 years ago) the magnetic field reverse itself by going nearly to 'zero' but then after a few thousand years it recovered and began to increase in strength. During the next 150,000 years it rose to a maximum strength and then began to decline. Notice, also, how fast the magnetic field recovers after it reaches 'zero', in some cases much less than 10,000 years.


Presently, Earth's magnetic field is weakening in strength by 5% every 100 years. It may be near zero in another few thousand years at this rate!

AAmag

So sometimes it gets stronger, sometimes weaker. But it has nothing to do with the age of the Earth.
More later.

 

[Truthfrees]

The ten best evidences for a young earth and creation including sea floor sediment, soft tissue in fossils, carbon-14, short-lived comets, and more.

Continue reading...

amen

this stood out to me as a key issue

"The problem is, as we consider the topic of origins, all so-called “evidences” must be interpreted. Facts don’t speak for themselves. Interpreting the facts of the present becomes especially difficult when reconstructing the historical events that produced those present-day facts, because no humans have always been present to observe all the evidence and to record how all the evidence was produced.
Forensic scientists must make multiple assumptions about things they cannot observe. How was the original setting different? Were different processes in play? Was the scene later contaminated? Just one wrong assumption or one tiny piece of missing evidence could totally change how they reconstruct the past events that led to the present-day evidence."

 

[daninthelionsden]

amen

this stood out to me as a key issue

"The problem is, as we consider the topic of origins, all so-called “evidences” must be interpreted. Facts don’t speak for themselves. Interpreting the facts of the present becomes especially difficult when reconstructing the historical events that produced those present-day facts, because no humans have always been present to observe all the evidence and to record how all the evidence was produced.
Forensic scientists must make multiple assumptions about things they cannot observe. How was the original setting different? Were different processes in play? Was the scene later contaminated? Just one wrong assumption or one tiny piece of missing evidence could totally change how they reconstruct the past events that led to the present-day evidence."

I would like to know the difference, if any, there is in carbon dating when you take into account the atmospheric conditions pre-flood as opposed to those conditions after the flood. Would that have any bearing on the accuracy of items being carbon dated that existed pre-flood?

 

[Truthfrees]

I would like to know the difference, if any, there is in carbon dating when you take into account the atmospheric conditions pre-flood as opposed to those conditions after the flood. Would that have any bearing on the accuracy of items being carbon dated that existed pre-flood?

good question

 

[Barbarian]

I would like to know the difference, if any, there is in carbon dating when you take into account the atmospheric conditions pre-flood as opposed to those conditions after the flood. Would that have any bearing on the accuracy of items being carbon dated that existed pre-flood?

Fortunately, we have records in the form of varves going back many thousands of years. Lake Suigetsu has varves that have been forming two per year for over 70,000 years. Which means that the carbon therein has been there longer than the accurate range of C-14 testing.

Indeed, variations in cosmic rays can change the rate of C-14 being produced in the high atmosphere, the data from Lake Suigetsu actually allowed scientists to more accurately calibrate the tests. They weren't off by much, but this data makes them more precise.

Here's how that compares to other ancient carbon sources: