101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe

Don Batten's article

RationalWiki's responses

No scientific method can prove the age of the universe or the earth, and that includes the ones we have listed here. Although age indicators are called "clocks" they aren't, because all ages result from calculations that necessarily involve making assumptions about the past. Always the starting time of the "clock" has to be assumed as well as the way in which the speed of the clock has varied over time. Further, it has to be assumed that the clock was never disturbed.

Creationists make only one assumption - that the history of the earth is faithfully recorded in the Book of Genesis - and they therefore dismiss all scientific evidence that does not fit in with this credo. It is perhaps surprising that nowhere does this article state an age of the earth - only that it is "young". The typical "young earth" age is in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 years - but many of the arguments made in the article seem to implicitly accept an age much older than this. The "evidence" presented here only serves to give a lower bound on the age of the earth, and indeed one with which all scientists can agree. If one tells a gathering of scientists that the oldest living tress show the earth is at least 8000 years old, you'll get a collective "Sure. So what?" Tell a cosmologist the same thing and he might escort you to his computer and show you a picture of a white dwarf star that has been cooling for the last 8 billion years. None of the evidence presented even tries to give an upper bound for the age of the earth or the universe.

It is also of note that almost every single link from the article goes to creationist sources as "evidence". While this is understandable, it might have been more convincing if mainstream peer-reviewed sources had been used to justify the claims. Is even just one too much to ask?

There is no independent natural clock against which those assumptions can be tested. For example, the amount of cratering on the moon, based on currently observed cratering rates, would suggest that the moon is quite old. However, to draw this conclusion we have to assume that the rate of cratering has been the same in the past as it is now. And there are now good reasons for thinking that it might have been quite intense in the past, in which case the craters do not indicate an old age at all (see below).

Ages of millions of years are all calculated by assuming the rates of change of processes in the past were the same as we observe today—called the principle of uniformitarianism. If the age calculated from such assumptions disagrees with what they think the age should be, they conclude that their assumptions did not apply in this case, and adjust them accordingly. If the calculated result gives an acceptable age, the investigators publish it.

From the mostly BS hypothesis that the speed of light has changed, to the rate of radiometric decay to the rate that the Grand Canyon could form, creationists will always poke holes in the many assumptions required by science in order to develop and test theories. In science, these assumptions are reasonable and usually themselves backed up with enough evidence for us to claim that they are, for the sake of argument, correct. Uniformitarianism is considered to be extremely reasonable in this regard. With respect to the rate of meteor impacts on the moon, we assume a constant rate with slight variations depending on the stage of development of the solar system. To propose a changing rate would require a mechanism to change the rate, hence different periods of development will slightly alter this rate due to the increased prevalence of small bodies over larger ones in the distant past. However, the "increased rate" required to produce all those craters in 6,000 years -actually, it would be less than 6,000 years as we have records of observing the moon that rules out at least half of that time featuring any impacts - would be completely unreasonable and unrealistic. If the rate of impacts to the moon was high enough to give it its characteristic surface in under 6,000 years we'd expect a lot more craters on the Earth -near enough the same number as seen on the moon- as weathering wouldn't have had enough time to remove them. The "increased intensity" that the paragraph alludes to is nowhere near the figure required to produce this amount of cratering in so few years.

Examples of young ages listed here are also obtained by applying the same principle of uniformitarianism. Long-age proponents will dismiss this sort of evidence for a young earth by arguing that the assumptions about the past do not apply in these cases. In other words, age is not really a matter of scientific observation but an argument about our assumptions about the unobserved past.

The assumptions behind the evidences presented here cannot be proved, but the fact that such a wide range of different phenomena all suggest much younger ages than are currently generally accepted, provides a strong case for questioning those accepted ages (about 14 billion years for the universe and 4.5 billion years for the solar system).

This is an interesting paragraph because they start (above) by bashing science and saying it can't "prove" anything, and then go on to claim that their own assumptions can't be proved either. However, when two parties disagree, the truth doesn't always lie in the middle, it is possible for one party to simply be wrong.

Also, a number of the evidences, rather than giving any estimate of age, challenge the assumption of slow-and-gradual uniformitarianism, upon which all deep-time dating methods depend.

Are we agreeing with the concept of uniformitarianism here or not? Please, please, please make up your mind...

Many of these indicators for younger ages were discovered when creationist scientists started researching things that were supposed to "prove" long ages. The lesson here is clear: when the evolutionists throw up some new challenge to the Bible's timeline, don't fret over it. Sooner or later that supposed evidence will be turned on its head and will even be added to this list of evidences for a younger creation. On the other hand, some of the evidences listed here might turn out to be ill-founded with further research and will need to be modified. Such is the nature of science, especially historical science, because we cannot do experiments on past events (see "It's not science").

This is an incredible misrepresentation of science. No one who does experimentation and tests expects every result to fit exactly in same range. There are always outliers and unforeseen effects. The important thing is what the majority of the evidence points to and can be replicated. To say then that the outliers and unexplained should take precedent over the weight of evidence is the height of arrogance and stupidity.

Science is based on observation, and the only reliable means of telling the age of anything is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed the events. The Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the creation. See The Universe's Birth Certificate and Biblical chronogenealogies (technical).

Yes, the Bible is indeed in communication with the only "One" who was around for the Big Bang. The Bible says it is so it must be true! The Creationists claim that God is a reliable witness although he did not physically inscribe the Bible all by himself; it was done by the hands of many men over the course of centuries and copied countless times. This paragraph also neglects to mention the hundreds of other ancient texts and myths which claim the same thing with the same degree of assurance and with the same amount -i.e., bugger all- of evidence.

In the end the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded. That same Bible also tells us of God's judgment on those who reject his right to rule over them. But it also tells us of his willingness to forgive us for our rebellious behaviour. The coming of Jesus Christ, who was intimately involved in the creation process at the beginning (1:1–3" John 1:1–3), into the world, has made this possible (see Good news).

This religious declaration has no scientific validity, and is dubious in itself - John 1:1-3 does not mention Jesus, and has its origins in the ancient Greek philosophical term Logos. The identification of Jesus with the Logos is a recent invention.

DNA in "ancient" fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.

While techniques for sequencing ancient DNA (aDNA), including double primer PCR amplification are far from perfect due to the possibility of extensive post-mortem mutation, credible studies prove the existence of high quality ancient pathogen DNA from human and other species going back as far as 18,000 years ^{[citation needed]} and fragments of insect DNA going back as far as 25-40 million years ^{[citation needed]}. The study of aDNA is an emerging field apparently best not trusted to biblical scholars.

This is the first statement that incorrectly reasons that if a specific piece of evidence for a theory may be wrong, the whole theory is wrong and thus their theory must be right. Even if the DNA sequencing turned out to be ineffective for 25-40 million year old remains, it would still be reliable for sequences DNA older than their 6,000 years. This is in no way evidence for their theory. This kind of fallacious argument of confusing a critique against a theory with an argument for their theory will be repeated many many times in this article.

Lazarus bacteria—bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old.

Another example of creationists seizing on uncertainty in the scientific community to sow the seeds of doubt on the entirety of science. Vreeland and his team's claimed isolation of 250 million year old bacteria from salt deposits in the Delaware Basin has not been uniformly accepted.^[1] This evidence does not implicate any number of other uncontroversial methods of proving the earth is old than 6,000 years.^[2]

The decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly deleterious mutations each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago. Sanford, J., Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome, Ivan Press, 2005; see review of the book and the interview with the author in Creation 30(4):45–47,September 2008. This has been confirmed by realistic modelling of population genetics, which shows that genomes are young, in the order of thousands of years. See Sanford, J., Baumgardner, J., Brewer, W., Gibson, P. and Remine, W., Mendel's Accountant: A biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program, SCPE 8(2):147–165, 2007.

This argument distantly echoes the fall of man in its assumption that the human genome is in a state of "decay," presupposing in the first place that humanity has declined from an idealised golden age. The truth is that the human genome is continually mutating - some mutations are beneficial and some are harmful, although it is a common ID argument that mutations can only be harmful.

The data for "mitochondrial Eve" are consistent with a common origin of all humans several thousand years ago.

Creationists and real scientists aren't talking about the same "Eve" here. Mitochondria contain mitochondrial DNA, which scientists surmise derives from an early point in evolutionary history when mitochondria existing symbiotically with precursors to animals cells merged. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed only from the female to its offspring. In the cell, mtDNA is separate from nuclear DNA and is not recombined during cellular division. Thus, notwithstanding mutation of mtDNA in any particular individual, it is possible to track all human beings back in time through matrilineal ancestry to a single “Mitochondrial Eve” who most likely didn't have Bette Davis eyes. “Mitochondrial Eve” is thought to have lived 170,000 to 200,000 years ago, which is completely consistent with human evolutionary timescales and with an old earth. Unlike the Eve of the Bible, Mitochondrial Eve is not believed to be the first human female; she is only the most recent common female ancestor of all persons living today. This does not imply that she was the only female around at the time; just that the family lines of all the other women alive at that time were interrupted at some point, either by having no children or by having only sons. Mitochondrial Eve had to inherit her mtDNA from her mother, after all; and her mother inherited it from her grandmother, etc., on all the way back to the first mitochondrion in the first eukaryotic cell.

Very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human Y-chromosome around the world is consistent with a recent origin of mankind, thousands not millions of years.

The Y-chromosome, unlike most DNA, is inherited only from the father, which means that all DNA on the human Y chromosome can be followed back to a single most recent common male ancestor. Of course, that male would have inherited his Y chromosome from his father, who inherited it from his father, etc. The existence of a Y-chromosome Adam does not mean that there was only one man alive at that time of the most recent common male ancestor, but rather that the male-exclusive lineages of all the other men alive at that time have been broken - either by childlessness or by having only daughters, who don't carry the father's Y chromosome to the next generation. Because the only factor affecting the makeup of the DNA on the Y chromosome is mutation, measuring mutation rates and extrapolating them backwards can provide an estimate of when this most recent comman male ancestor lived. Calculations by the geneticist Spencer Wells have shown that this man lived around 60,000 years ago.^[3] Note that the age estimates for Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam are not particularly close; there is no reason to suspect that they would be. Consider the Biblical account of the Flood: assume for the moment that it is perfectly accurate. Noah would represent the Y-chromosome Adam, since no other males survived the Flood except for Noah's sons; however Noah was certainly not the first man on Earth. So the 'origin of mankind' and the dating of Y-chromosome Adam really have nothing to do with one another.

Many fossil bones "dated" at many millions of years old are hardly mineralized, if at all. See, for example, Dinosaur bones just how old are they really?

Firstly, there is no requirement that fossil bones have to be re-mineralised - bones and teeth are naturally made from a mineral (calcium carbonate) in the first place. Secondly, this still leaves fossil bones which are dated many millions of years old that have been mineralised. And apparently dinosaur bones can date from "between 235 and 240 million years ago." ^[4]

Dinosaur blood cells, blood vessels, proteins (hemoglobin, osteocalcin, collagen) are not consistent with their supposed age, but make more sense if the remains are young.

This is a classic example of proceeding from false premises to confuse the discussion. Claims of protein, DNA, or any other extant biological material extracted from dinosaur remains are controversial even among paleobiologists. Evidence supporting such claims includes iron-bearing substances theorized to represent heme compounds found in bone marrow. Opponents contend that certain "dinosaur soft tissues" could well have been recent bacterial sediment.

Lack of 50:50 racemization of amino acids in fossils "dated" at millions of years old, whereas complete racemization would occur in thousands of years.

Amino acid racemization dating is a technique that is used to date fossilized objects up to several millions of years in age by measuring the ratio of amino acid isomers. Measuring the degree of racemization and other known quantities can give you an estimated age of the sample. By measuring the racemization of the amino acid isoleucine, for example, objects can be dated up to several million years old.^[5] While it is true that there can be great variability on the rate at which amino acids undergo racemization, the changes in humidity, temperature, and acidity required to make the oldest known samples conform to a young earth (under 6000 years) view are completely unreasonable.

Living fossils—jellyfish, graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real.

First of all, the jellyfish have actually changed somewhat, as have the coelacanths. Also, of the lifeforms given as examples, only the Wollemi pine is a species, and not such an old one as claimed.

Back to the point, they didn't change much because they were well-adapted to a stable environment. This argument also presumes that the only changes are morphological; evolution also includes biochemical changes, behavioral changes, and others that are not preserved in the fossil record.

Discontinuous fossil sequences. E.g. Coelacanth, Wollemi pine and various "index" fossils, which are present in supposedly ancient strata, missing in strata representing many millions of years since, but still living today. Such discontinuities speak against the interpretation of the rock formations as vast geological ages—how could Coelacanths have avoided being fossilized for 65 million years, for example? See The "Lazarus effect": rodent "resurrection"!

Fossilisation is a rare event, and for those fossils then to be dragged somewhere we can find them is even rarer. Anyway, if, as YECs assert, fossils were all laid down during the Great Flood, why were Coelecanths only found in the lower strata? Their interpretation of the data is inconsistent with their own model.

The ages of the world's oldest living organisms, trees, are consistent with a time frame for the earth of thousands of years.

This "argument" is almost too silly to refute. Those very old trees grew from seeds set by older trees - trees which may themselves have had to be very old before reaching sexual maturity. And they had parents as well...

In fact Dendrochronology - the science of studying tree rings - is an excellent way of disproving a young earth. By matching the growth patterns seen in tree rings between different trees that lived at similar times, the ages that this method can be used to look at can be extended far beyond the lifetime of a single tree that has only recently been cut down.

Lack of plant fossils in many formations containing abundant animal / herbivore fossils. E.g., the Morrison Formation (Jurassic) in Montana. See Origins 21(1):51–56, 1994. Also the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways (animals), but is almost devoid of plants. Implication: these rocks are not ecosystems of an "era" buried in situ over eons of time as evolutionists claim. The evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah's day. This eliminates supposed evidence for millions of years.

Plants are almost completely soft tissue and therefore most of their remains decay very, very quickly. Animals, on the other hand, have bones (and teeth, and shells, etc.) - and these are the parts that are fossilized most readily. Also "trackways" are only made in moist sediments which are largely devoid of vegetation in the first place. Owing to the transitory nature of tracks, no modern geologist insists that they were buried over eons but recognises that a special event which covered the tracks took place. This does not imply a global flood but only a small-scale event. If tracks were buried in situ over eons then the Earth would be covered in them.

Thick, tightly bent strata without sign of melting or fracturing. E.g. the Kaibab upwarp in Grand Canyon indicates rapid folding before the sediments had time to solidify (the sand grains were not elongated under stress as would be expected if the rock had hardened). This wipes out hundreds of millions of years of time and is consistent with extremely rapid formation during the biblical Flood. See Warped earth.

First of all, the logic that the strata is bent, therefore the Earth is young, doesn't follow. But even if it did, a flood would more or less smooth out the entire planet.

Second, what seems like "solid rock" to us is actually "plastic" - under long term stress or strain, these crystalline structures can - and did - deform into convoluted shapes. No magic is required.

Polystrate fossils—tree trunks in coal (Auracaria spp. king billy pines, celery top pines, in southern hemisphere coal). There are also polystrate tree trunks in the Yellowstone fossilized forests and Joggins, Nova Scotia and in many other places. Polystrate fossilized lycopod trunks occur in northern hemisphere coal, again indicating rapid burial / formation of the organic material that became coal.

At the simplest, a tree becomes petrified, perhaps in a layer of soft sedimentary rock. The fossilizing minerals, however, are hard. The sedimentary rock wears away, leaving what we would call if we saw it today, a "petrified forest". More sedimentary layers form around these fossilized trees, and become layers of new rock over time. Voila! Fossil trees extending through layers dated tens or hundreds of thousands of years older than the dead trees. Woooo!

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, coal forms quickly; in weeks for brown coal to months for black coal. It does not need millions of years. Furthermore, long time periods could be an impediment to coal formation because of the increased likelihood of the permineralization of the wood, which would hinder coalification.

Coal can form in a short period of time, therefore it cannot have formed a long time ago. Basic logic fail: you can dig a hole in two minutes with a shovel, but that doesn't mean that all holes are two minutes old. This is the first occurrence of this incredibly common logical fallacy in this document. Also, even assuming that coalification can occur rapidly under certain circumstances (volcanism mixing clays with organic matter in the correct proportion, then providing unvarying heat above the boiling point of water for many months), it cannot then be assumed that all coal formed by this particular method. Catastrophic flooding can cut deep valleys very quickly, but not every deep valley is cut by catastrophic flooding; in fact most are not.

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, oil forms quickly; it does not need millions of years, consistent with an age of thousands of years.

These guys should be making big money in the biofuels market instead of relying on indulgences and donations if they can demonstrate this.

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, opals form quickly, in a matter of weeks, not millions of years, as had been claimed.

And so what? If this is true (which is rather doubtful), it only means that opals can form in a matter of weeks and that those opal mining weirdos living underground in the Australian outback missed the boat.

The simple fact is that Len Cram, the man claiming he can grow opals, has never published his method so others can test it - this, and the fact that his "grown" opals look identical to mined ones tends to lead to the hypothesis that he is not growing opals, but mining them.

Evidence for rapid, catastrophic formation of coal beds speaks against the hundreds of millions of years normally claimed for this, including Z-shaped seams that point to a single depositional event producing these layers.

The formation and distortion of coal seams is easily explained by accepted (i.e. slow) geological processes. See this book for more details.

Evidence for rapid petrifaction of wood speaks against the need for long periods of time and is consistent with an age of thousands of years.

Once again, the creationists take "something doesn't take millions of years" to mean "it must have taken less than 10,000 years". It's getting quite tiring. And again, as with oil, petrification can take place over a short period of time, therefore it cannot place over a long time ago. Basic logic fail.

Clastic dykes and pipes (intrusion of sediment through overlying sedimentary rock) show that the overlying rock strata were still soft when it happened. This drastically compresses the time scale for the deposition of the penetrated rock strata. See, Walker, T., Fluidisation pipes: Evidence of large-scale watery catastrophe, Journal of Creation (TJ) 14(3):8–9, 2000.

Clastic dikes are intrusions of sediment into cracks in harder rock layers. They do not imply the rock was intruded when it was soft, but that it cracked when it was hard. Hard rock cracks during earthquakes. See this for example.

Para(pseudo)conformities—where one rock stratum sits on top of another rock stratum but with supposedly millions of years of geological time missing, yet the contact plane lacks any significant erosion; that is, it is a "flat gap". E.g. Coconino sandstone / Hermit shale in the Grand Canyon (supposedly a 10 million year gap in time). The thick Schnebly Hill Formation (sandstone) lies between the Coconino and Hermit in central Arizona. See Austin, S.A., Grand Canyon, monument to catastrophe, ICR, Santee, CA, USA, 1994 and Snelling, A., The case of the "missing" geologic time, Creation 14(3):31–35, 1992.

Apparently, it never occurred to him that the layers that eroded away were the missing layers in the first place, leaving his miraculous lower layers intact. Also, he doesn't seem to realize that some environments don't leave sedimentation in the first place to form layers, which would then be "missing". Not to mention thrust faulting and other understood geologic phenomena which could also apply.

The presence of ephemeral markings (raindrop marks, ripple marks, animal tracks) at the boundaries of paraconformities show that the upper rock layer has been deposited immediately after the lower one, eliminating many millions of "gap" time. See references in Para(pseudo)conformities.

True - these markings are preserved only by rare events such as lava flows, which explains their great rarity. The mistake here is the assumption that rapidity of some depositions means rapidity of all depositions.

Inter-tonguing of adjacent strata that are supposedly separated by millions of years also eliminates many millions of years of supposed geologic time. The case of the "missing" geologic time; Mississippian and Cambrian strata interbedding: 200 million years hiatus in question, CRSQ 23(4):160–167.

The lack of bioturbation (worm holes, root growth) at paraconformities (flat gaps) reinforces the lack of time involved where evolutionary geologists insert many millions of years to force the rocks to conform with the "given" timescale of billions of years.

Still doesn't understand that some environments DON'T leave deposits and that you can walk on ancient rock many places on the planet. While we are at it, can he explain how in the midst of a worldwide flood, animals and plants are still finding the time to burrow and lay down roots?

The almost complete lack of clearly recognizable soil layers anywhere in the geologic column. Geologists do claim to have found lots of "fossil" soils (paleosols), but these are quite different to soils today, lacking the features that characterize soil horizons; features that are used in classifying different soils. Every one that has been investigated thoroughly proves to lack the characteristics of proper soil. If "deep time" were correct, with hundreds of millions of years of abundant life on the earth, there should have been ample opportunities many times over for soil formation. See Klevberg, P. and Bandy, R., CRSQ 39:252–68; CRSQ 40:99–116, 2003; Walker, T., Paleosols: digging deeper buries "challenge" to Flood geology, Journal of Creation 17(3):28–34, 2003.

First off, the "geologic column" is a term used solely by creationists as a straw man. Its use in this particular argument is discussed more fully in Joe Meert's 2003 essay on the subject.^[6]

Limited extent of unconformities (unconformity: a surface of erosion that separates younger strata from older rocks). Surfaces erode quickly (e.g. Badlands, South Dakota), but there are very limited unconformities. There is the "great unconformity" at the base of the Grand Canyon, but otherwise there are supposedly ~300 million years of strata deposited on top without any significant unconformity. This is again consistent with a much shorter time of deposition of these strata. See Para(pseudo)conformities.

It's funny to see him try to pick apart geologists claims while avoiding the glaring flaw in his own hypothesis. How exactly does a world wide flood create discreet layers, complete with recognizable environments as well as recognizably more primitive lifeforms, in the first place? In addition, some of those environments, such as salt beds, are extremely unlikely to form underwater. Add the remarkable conformity of the radiometric dates in worldwide formations and he's got one heck of a gorilla in the room to account for.

The amount of salt in the world's oldest lake contradicts its supposed age and suggests an age more consistent with its formation after Noah's Flood.

Once again it is claimed that the fact that something may be younger than was previously thought means that the whole concept of "deep time" is false.

The discovery that underwater landslides ("turbidity currents") travelling at some 50 km/h can create huge areas of sediment in a matter of hours (Press, F., and Siever, R., Earth, 4^th ed., Freeman & Co., NY, USA, 1986). Sediments thought to have formed slowly over eons of time are now becoming recognized as having formed extremely rapidly. See for example, A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flow (Technical).

Assuming this means that the world was formed all of a sudden one day when an ocean appeared and started sweeping around sediment, underwater turbidity currents are most common in areas of seismic instability. By this theory, only parts of the world around tectonic plates would be formed, thus leaving massive holes in the Earth where you could fall into one day if you weren't looking where you were going.

Flume tank research with sediment of different particle sizes show that layered rock strata that were thought to have formed over huge periods of time in lake beds actually formed very quickly. Even the precise layer thicknesses of rocks were duplicated after they were ground into their sedimentary particles and run through the flume. See Experiments in stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures, Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up! and Sandy Stripes Do many layers mean many years?

Wow, now he just needs to prove that the global flood was like his highly controlled experiment, complete with flume, instead of massively turbulent and chaotic circumstances that are normally attributed to it, and he might actually approach a point.

Observed examples of rapid canyon formation; for example, Providence Canyon in southwest Georgia, Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington, and Lower Loowit Canyon near Mount St Helens. The rapidity of the formation of these canyons, which look similar to other canyons that supposedly took many millions of years to form, brings into question the supposed age of the canyons that no one saw form.

Nobody is disputing that canyons can form rapidly, especially in the volcanic and alluvial deposits the article mentions; however this does not imply that all canyons are formed so quickly.

Observed examples of rapid island formation and maturation, such as Surtsey, which confound the notion that such islands take long periods of time to form. See also, Tuluman—A Test of Time.

Surtsey is a volcano; not all islands are volcanoes. Britain's path to islandhood involved a massive lake bursting its banks thousands of years ago, cutting away the chalk deposits linking it to Europe. Other islands such as Sri Lanka and Cuba were formed as rising sea levels isolated them from the mainland.

Rate of erosion of coastlines, horizontally. E.g. Beachy Head, UK, loses a metre of coast to the sea every six years.

And where do you suppose the coastline goes? To heaven? Sooner or later it will end up someplace else - quite possibly on land. Rye, a town in the same county as Beachy Head, was once an important port but now is inland. Re Beachy Head: see above.

Similarly, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, which is entirely sand and gravel (a glacial moraine), sometimes loses precipitous amounts of shoreline in places - while aggregating large amounts in other places.

Rate of erosion of continents vertically. See Creation 22(2):18–21.

What about it? If they're arguing that all the continents should be worn down to nubbins by now, there's geological upthrusting forces to counteract that.

Continents are not eroding uniformly, neither is erosion the only process taking place. Some areas such as southern Sweden are rising, a fact known since 1810^[7] but which this entry fails to mention, for some reason.

Existence of significant flat plateaux that are "dated" at many millions of years old ("elevated paleoplains"). An example is Kangaroo Island (Australia). C.R. Twidale, a famous Australian physical geographer wrote: "the survival of these paleoforms is in some degree an embarrassment to all the commonly accepted models of landscape development." Twidale, C.R. On the survival of paleoforms, American Journal of Science 5(276):77–95, 1976 (quote on p. 81). See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve? Impact 118, April 1983.

And the reason they cannot be millions of years old is?

The recent and almost simultaneous origin of all major mountain ranges around the world: all "dated" at only 5 million years ago, whereas the continents have, it is claimed, been around for up to billions of years. See Baumgardner, J., Recent uplift of today's mountains. Impact 381, March 2005.

"Mountains date back five million years, therefore the world was created in 4004 BCE."

The statement is utterly false anyway. The Appalachians date back so far (450 million years) that they pre-date the Atlantic Ocean (rocks found in the Appalachians are of the same type as in Scandinavia and Scotland^[8]).

Water gaps. These are gorges cut through mountain ranges where rivers run. They occur worldwide and are part of what evolutionary geologists call "discordant drainage systems". They are "discordant" because they don't fit the deep time belief system. The evidence fits them forming rapidly in a much younger age framework where the gorges were cut in the recessive stage / dispersive phase of the global Flood of Noah's day. See Oard, M., Do rivers erode through mountains? Water gaps are strong evidence for the Genesis Flood, Creation 29(3):18–23, 2007.

First of all, the phrase "evolutionary geologist" is bogus, as rocks do not evolve (or do they?).

Anyway, what evidence?

Erosion at Niagara Falls and other such places is consistent with just a few thousand years since the biblical Flood.

As per the argument about trees: "the Niagara falls are a few thousand years old, therefore the world is a few thousand years old." The Victoria Falls are over a hundred thousand years old, and may date from the African superswell, an uprising of land between 30 and 5 million years ago.

River delta growth rate is consistent with thousands of years since the biblical Flood, not vast periods of time. The argument goes back to Mark Twain. E.g. 1. Mississippi—Creation Research Quarterly (CRSQ) 9:96–114, 1992; CRSQ 14:77; CRSQ 25:121–123. E.g. 2 Tigris–Euphrates: CRSQ 14:87, 1977.

Ice age anyone? Deltas form at water level, and the current water level dates only from the end of the last ice age - that is, about eight to ten thousand years ago.

Underfit streams. River valleys are too large for the streams they contain. Dury speaks of the "continent-wide distribution of underfit streams". Using channel meander characteristics, Dury concluded that past streams frequently had 20–60 times their current discharge. This means that the river valleys would have been carved very quickly, not slowly over eons of time. See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve? Impact 118, 1983.

This assumes that rivers are entirely responsible for the valleys they are in, rather than, say, following the easiest route downstream.

Amount of salt in the sea. Even ignoring the effect of the biblical Flood and assuming zero starting salinity and all rates of input and removal so as to maximize the time taken to accumulate all the salt, the maximum age of the oceans, 62 million years, is less than 1/50 of the age evolutionists claim for the oceans.

The sea is 62 million years old, therefore Earth is young. Whatever you say, mate.

Anyway, the rate of increase - and decrease - in salinity of the oceans has varied over time. When seawater is separated from the ocean itself, and subsequently evaporates, the salts ("evaporite") left behind are no longer in the ocean, and the evaporated fresh water eventually returns.

The amount of sediment on the sea floors at current rates of land erosion would accumulate in just 12 million years; a blink of the eye compared to the supposed age of much of the ocean floor of up to 3 billion years. Furthermore, long-age geologists reckon that higher erosion rates applied in the past, which shortens the time frame. From a biblical point of view, at the end of Noah's Flood lots of sediment would have been added to the sea with the water coming off the unconsolidated land, making the amount of sediment perfectly consistent with a history of thousands of years.

The calculation arriving at 12 million years has been shown to be flawed and simplistic.^[9] It takes little account of subduction of the tectonic plates, and, in bringing ocean floor sediments into flood geology, exposes one of its major flaws: deposition via a single, global flood would have mixed the sediments into a single mélange of one type of sediment, with all sorts of rock and soil types jumbled together. The truth is that sediments vary in different parts of the world, with true mélanges occurring mostly in subduction zones.

Iron-manganese nodules (IMN) on the sea floors. The measured rates of growth of these nodules indicates an age of only thousands of years. Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Nodule growth is so incredibly slow that it takes several million years to form one centimeter.^[10]

The age of placer deposits (concentrations of heavy metals such as tin in modern sediments and consolidated sedimentary rocks). The measured rates of deposition indicate an age of thousands of years, not the assumed millions. See Lalomov, A.V., and Tabolitch, S.E., 2000. Age determination of coastal submarine placer, Val'cumey, northern Siberia. Journal of Creation (TJ) 14(3):83–90.

Lalomov has been shown to have misrepresented geological evidence in this matter, inserting names of metals into quotes from other scientists, and cherry-picking only those placer deposits that fit his ideas.^[11] Does the phrase thou shalt not bear false witness ring any bells, Mr Lalomov?

Pressure in oil / gas wells indicate the recent origin of the oil and gas. If they were many millions of years old we would expect the pressures to equilibrate, even in low permeability rocks. "Experts in petroleum prospecting note the impossibility of creating an effective model given long and slow oil generation over millions of years (Petukhov, 2004). In their opinion, if models demand the standard multimillion-years geochronological scale, the best exploration strategy is to drill wells on a random grid." Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.

Guess he's never heard of the pressure gradient thing. In order for gas to escape its got to go into a lower pressure environment. Don't believe me. Go blow up a rubber balloon. Let it sit for a week or so. Come back and you'll find it sitting there, not fully expanded but not empty either, but sitting as equilibrium with the room. So, now which do you think has more pressure? Solid rock or liquid oil? And if the rock were as permeable as suggested, than the pressure would NEVER build up in the first place. It would be like having several holes in a balloon, while you're trying to blow it up.

Direct evidence that oil is forming today in the Guaymas Basin and in Bass Strait is consistent with a young earth (although not necessary for a young earth).

Technically it is. It is also consistent with an old Earth. The fact that oil is forming today means absolutely nothing in regards to the age of the earth.

Rapid reversals in paleomagnetism undermine use of paleomagnetism in long ages dating of rocks and speak of rapid processes, compressing the long-age time scale enormously.

Why is there any process at all? Why are we not finding evidence of God magicking the world into existence instantaneously (or over 6 days)?

The depth-wise pattern of magnetization below the magnetic stripes evident where magma is welling up at the mid-ocean trenches argues against the usual interpretation of millions of years and rather indicates rapid processes consistent with a young earth (physicist Russ Humphreys pointed this out).

One word: Subduction.

Measured rates of stalactite and stalagmite growth in limestone caves are consistent with a young age of several thousand years. See also articles on limestone cave formation.

Obfuscate much? If evidence of the age of limestone caves supports a young earth (it doesn't), ignore that the Naica Mine of Chihuahua, Mexico is the home of some of the largest gypsum crystals on earth. Specimens in the area have been found that exceed 11 meters in length and 1 meter in width. Based on classical crystal growth theory, these crystals are older than one million years.^[12]

The decay of the earth's magnetic field. Exponential decay is evident from measurements and is consistent with theory of free decay since creation, suggesting an age of less than 20,000 years.

The Earth's magnetic field will reverse on occasion (these events can be as few as 50,000 years or several million years apart). During the period in between shifts, the magnetic field will decay. After a very, very long time of this it will flip.^[13]

In fact, we have evidence of magnetic reversals going as far back as the Ordorvician (485 to 463 million years ago). So the magnetic field point actually- once you research it- refutes itself.

Excess heat flow from the earth is consistent with a young age rather than billions of years, even taking into account heat from radioactive decay. SeeWoodmorappe, J., 1999. Lord Kelvin revisited on the young age of the earth. Journal of Creation (TJ) 13(1):14, 1999.

Here's an article by Dr Kevin R Henke rebuking Woodmorappe's work as containing a "strong religious bias." A Google search for "Woodmorappe"^[14] also leads to several articles citing him as a Young Earth Creationist known for twisting articles and omitting crucial points to reach a conclusion supportive of his own views.

Addressing the point made: "Average heat flow is greater than about 100 mW me2 for the youngest (~10 Ma) lithosphere. The mean values rapidly decrease from about 0 to 30 million years."^[15]

Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.

What? Is this really a YEC saying that carbon dating is reliable evidence? The same isotope they claim has a decay rate that is always varying to fit their figures? Once again, YECs pick and choose, taking only evidence that supports their world view, even if it contradicts their other claims.

The most important thing to remember about carbon-14 dating is that it is only useful to date things to, at most, 60,000 years in the past. For older objects than that, other methods are used. What this means is that the rest of the points made here are simply irrelevant.

Carbon-14 in oil again suggests ages of thousands, not millions, of years.

As above.

Carbon-14 in fossil wood also indicates ages of thousands, not millions, of years.

As above.

Carbon-14 in diamonds suggests ages of thousands, not billions, of years.

As above.

Incongruent radioisotope dates using the same technique argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years.

The citation given is a chapter of a creationist book which itself says carbon-14 dating is unreliable past 35-45 thousand years, due to that being the upper limit of the test, so anything older will return a result of 35-45 thousand years. Their own publication invalidates their last four points.

Incongruent radioisotope dates using different techniques argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years.

This is exactly the same as the above one. So, YECs can't even think of 101 things?

Demonstrably non-radiogenic "isochrons" of radioactive and non-radioactive elements undermine the assumptions behind isochron "dating" that gives billions of years. "False" isochrons are common.

Different faces of the same zircon crystal and different zircons from the same rock giving different "ages" undermine all "dates" obtained from zircons.

The dates given are never wildly discordant, and are due to different rates of lead loss from different zircons.

Evidence of a period of rapid radioactive decay in the recent past (lead and helium concentrations and diffusion rates in zircons) point to a young earth explanation.

Refuted at TalkOrigins archive: [1]

The amount of helium, a product of alpha-decay of radioactive elements, retained in zircons in granite is consistent with an age of 6,000±2000 years, not the supposed billions of years. See: Humphreys, D.R., Young helium diffusion age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay, in Vardiman, Snelling, and Chaffin (eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society, 848 pp., 2005

Does this point require argument #59? If not, combining with #59 gives a far younger earth than the age these YECs are suggesting. If it depends on the validity of #59, see the point above for refutations.

Lead in zircons from deep drill cores vs. shallow ones. They are similar, but there should be less in the deep ones due to the higher heat causing higher diffusion rates over the usual long ages supposed. If the ages are thousands of years, there would not be expected to be much difference, which is the case (Gentry, R., et al., Differential lead retention in zircons: Implications for nuclear waste containment, Science 216(4543):296–298, 1982; DOI: 10.1126/science.216.4543.296).

Pleochroic halos produced in granite by concentrated specks of short half-life elements such as polonium suggest a period of rapid nuclear decay of the long half-life parent isotopes during the formation of the rocks and rapid formation of the rocks, both of which speak against the usual ideas of geological deep time. See, Radiohalos: Startling evidence of catastrophic geologic processes, Creation 28(2):46–50, 2006.

Polonium halos, as a supposed proof of a young earth, has been rebutted before repeatedly and is falling out of favour among creationists as a piece of evidence. Probably because it uses long sciencey words...

Squashed pleochroic halos (radiohalos) formed from decay of polonium, a very short half-life element, in coalified wood from several geological eras suggest rapid formation of all the layers about the same time, in the same process, consistent with the biblical "young" earth model rather than the millions of years claimed for these events.

And this "evidence" is different from the one above how, exactly? I know creationists repeat old arguments as if they'd never been refuted, but doing it in consecutive paragraphs is a bit much.

Australia's "Burning Mountain" speaks against radiometric dating and the millions of years belief system (according to radiometric dating of the lava intrusion that set the coal alight, the coal in the burning mountain has been burning for ~40 million years, but clearly this is not feasible).

This "evidence" proceeds from the false premise apparently only used by creationists that the Burning Mountain coal seam has been burning for 40 million years (where the hell did they get that figure from?) and ends with a non sequitor implying an argument from incredulity keyed off by the author's use of "clearly" without any substantiation of the proof.

Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth's moon is inconsistent with its supposed vast age because it should have long since cooled if it were billions of years old. See: Transient lunar phenomena: a permanent problem for evolutionary models of Moon formation and Walker, T., and Catchpoole, D., Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe, Creation 31(3):18, 2009.

First of all, what has evolution got to do with the moon? Second, ever notice that his "recent" is never defined? Third, there is NO evidence of volcanic activity within the last 3 billion years. Zero, none, nadda. Unless he's counting material from meteor impacts being melted as volcanic, this is complete bullsh!t.

Recession of the moon from the earth. Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age.

Sure, if you overestimate the rate of recession of the moon by almost two times, you can get bad results. Garbage in, garbage out. Even plugging actual data into this equation is taking an overly simplistic view of the Earth-moon system.

Tidal friction is a major player in this system, and its magnitude has to be included to get a realistic rate of lunar recession in the past. Of course, this magnitude will depend heavily on the layout of the continents. The current layout of the continents presents far more surface area to the tides than would the "supercontinent" Pangaea, hence less tidal friction in the past.

Slowing down of the earth. Tidal dissipation rate of Earth's angular momentum: increasing length of day, currently by 0.002 seconds/day every century (thus an impossibly short day billions of years ago and a very slow day shortly after accretion and before the postulated giant impact to form the Moon). See: How long has the moon been receding?

We'll apply some actual figures and math here instead of these. The current known rate is .005 sec/year/year (even larger slowing than is claimed!), however taking this back 4.6 billion years we get an earth day that is 14 hours long. Short compared to now but not exactly impossible and actually compares well with recorded coral growth pattern of days being 22 hours long 370 million years ago.

Ghost craters on the moon's maria (singular mare: dark "seas" formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for long ages. Evolutionists believe that the lava flows were caused by enormous impacts, and this lava partly buried other, smaller, impact craters, leaving "ghosts". But this means that the smaller impacts can't have been too long after the huge one, otherwise the lava would have hardened before the impact. This suggests a very narrow time frame for lunar cratering, and by implication the other cratered bodies of our solar system. They suggest that the cratering occurred quite quickly. See Fryman, H., Ghost craters in the sky, Creation Matters 4(1):6, 1999; A biblically based cratering theory (Faulkner); Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe.

Does it really stand to reason that because craters occurred soon after some lava flows, that means that all craters occurred at that time? If there are handprints in the cement in front of your house, does that mean that no one has ever used your sidewalk except when its cement was drying? Oh and all estimates put the cratering and volcanic period happening 3 BILLION years ago. If this had happened in the last 6000 years or so, the so-called heavy bombardment period, the moon and earth would probably STILL be molten? Kind of a bummer for Adam, eh?

The presence of a significant magnetic field around Mercury is not consistent with its supposed age of billions of years. A planet so small should have cooled down enough so any liquid core would solidify, preventing the evolutionists' "dynamo" mechanism. See also, Humphreys, D.R., Mercury's magnetic field is young! Journal of Creation 22(3):8–9, 2008.

It is true that scientists did first assume that Mercury would not have a molten core, and were surprised to find its magnetic field. However, just because most small planets would have completely cooled down by now by now means says that all small planets would have long ago lost their liquid cores and corresponding magnetic field. Current thinking is that Mercury's core contains high amounts of sulfur, which would lower the melting point of the material and so keep it liquid longer.

See "Molten core solves mystery of Mercury's magnetic field". by Jon Cartwright at physicsworld.com.

The outer planets Uranus and Neptune have magnetic fields, but they should be long "dead" if they are as old as claimed according to evolutionary long-age beliefs. Assuming a solar system age of thousands of years, physicist Russell Humphreys successfully predicted the strengths of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.

So something not entirely understood yet is evidence for creation? Can we say God of the Gaps argument? The magnetic field thing is also a canard since magnetic fields vary over time and using a specified time period wouldn't really matter. Its like looking at a sine wave. Whatever particular time period you use, a sine wave doesn't change its properties. So saying that its correct for this particular time period is irrelevant since it would be correct for ANY time period.

Jupiter's larger moons, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, have magnetic fields, which they should not have if they were billions of years old, because they have solid cores and so no dynamo could generate the magnetic fields. This is consistent with creationist Humphreys' predictions. See also, Spencer, W., Ganymede: the surprisingly magnetic moon, Journal of Creation 23(1):8–9, 2009.

This is wrong. Only Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, actually has its own magnetic field. Io has no field at all, while Europa's field is induced by Jupiter's own. Ganymede is thought to have a molten core, and thus generate its own field through the standard dynamo effect model.

Volcanically active moons of Jupiter (Io) are consistent with youthfulness (Galileo mission recorded 80 active volcanoes). If Io had been erupting over 4.5 billion years at even 10% of its current rate, it would have erupted its entire mass 40 times. Io looks like a young moon and does not fit with the supposed billions of year's age for the solar system. Gravitational tugging from Jupiter and other moons accounts for only some of the excess heat produced.

Gravitational tugging of Io does cause massive heat and volcanoes. The gravitational fields of Jupiter, and its large moons Europa and Ganymede, cause tidal bulges in the solid crust of Io that are as high as 100 meters (330 feet). As Io orbits the giant planet, the bulge moves, flexes the crust, and heats Io's interior. Infrared observations have shown that the thermal energy released by Io's hot spots is on the order of 125 trillion watts. It is irrelvant that it would have erupted its mass 40 times over in 4.5 billion because it has never been suggested that Io has been a satellite of Jupiter for 4.5 billion years.

The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Studies of the few craters indicated that up to 95% of small craters, and many medium-sized ones, are formed from debris thrown up by larger impacts. This means that there have been far fewer impacts than had been thought in the solar system and the age of other objects in the solar system, derived from cratering levels, have to be reduced drastically (see Psarris, Spike, What you aren't being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD, available from CMI).

Okay, Europa's outer crust is ice and evidently very active. Only large, recent craters and their effects would have a chance of remaining visible any large amount of time.

Methane on Titan (Saturn's largest moon)—methane would all be gone because of UV-induced breakdown to ethane in just 10,000 years. And large quantities of ethane are not there either.

While interesting, this is reasoning ahead of the evidence. The most likely explanation is that Titan's atmospheric methane is replenished from underground repositories. This explanation is supported by observations by Cassini detected surface carbon dioxide, which indicates outgassing from the core. As for ethane, in fact the Cassini probe has found considerable ethane forming vast liquid ethane seas and lakes, while vastly more forms an ethane "mist."

Indeed using the creationist's worst nightmare, mathematics, we can show that the 6000 year time scale is far short of that required to produce all the observed ethane on Titan.

Given the current best estimates of the rate of photodisassociation of methane on Titan 4 x 10⁻¹² Kg per M² per second, and given the generous (and obviously wrong) assumption that the entire surface area of Titan is insolated year round, we can come up with a ceiling of 6.28 x 10¹³ Kg of methane disassociated in the history of Titan, of which ~12.5% would have been lost as hydrogen gas. This gives us, at very most, 5.52 x 10¹³ Kg of ethane. Assuming a liquid density in the region of 520 Kg per cubic metre, we would expect no more than 1.06 x 10¹¹ cubic metres of ethane on Titan. This means that the so far observed seas and lakes on Titan (with only 30% of the surface surveyed) could only be on average 0.2 cm in depth at best, which we know is wrong since most of them don't return a radar signature indicating they are more than 10 metres deep. This also excludes the vast reservoir of aerosol ethane in the atmosphere.

The rate of change / disappearance of Saturn's rings is inconsistent with their supposed vast age; they speak of youthfulness.

Saturn's rings could be rejuvenated by new asteroids being torn apart by the planet's gravity. And where exactly does it say that Saturn's Rings have to be of a vast age and not a recent phenomenon?

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, looks young. Astronomers working in the "billions of years" mindset thought that this moon would be cold and dead, but it is a very active moon, spewing massive jets of water vapour and icy particles into space at supersonic speeds, consistent with a much younger age. Calculations show that the interior would have frozen solid after 30 million years (less than 1% of its supposed age); tidal friction from Saturn does not explain its youthful activity (Psarris, Spike, What you aren't being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD; Walker, T., 2009. Enceladus: Saturn's sprightly moon looks young, Creation 31(3):54–55).

If the calculations show that Enceladus could have frozen as little as 30 million years ago it is still not evidence for a 6,000 year old Biblical universe. Tidal friction is still the leading theory as to Enceladus activity and the Cassini space probe will confirm whether this is the case in 2010.

Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, should have been long since dead, if billions of years old, but its extreme surface features suggest otherwise. See Revelations in the solar system.

Miranda's geological activity is believed to have been driven by tidal heating.^[16]

Neptune should be long since "cold", lacking strong wind movement if it were billions of years old, yet the Galileo probe in 1995 found it to be otherwise—it has the fastest winds in the entire solar system. This observation is consistent with a young age, not billions of years. See Revelations in the solar system and Neptune: monument to creation.

Original theories about Neptune assumed it would be dead, but it was found otherwise, so those theories were modified Current theories for Neptune's heat are radioactive decay and chemical reactions, but nothing is proven yet. Eventually through experiments and tests, a working theory will be found. That's called science. You can't just throw away all the other evidence for an old universe to force fit one or two mysteries.

Neptune's rings have thick regions and thin regions. This unevenness means they cannot be billions of years old, since collisions of the ring objects would eventually make the ring very uniform. Revelations in the solar system.

Firstly, Saturn's rings say nothing about the age of the planet itself but more importantly Saturn's moons (mainly the moon's Pandora and Prometheus) act as shepherds as they move in orbit around Saturn, pushing particles back into the rings.

Young surface age of Neptune's moon, Triton—less than 10 million years, even with evolutionary assumptions on rates of impacts (see Schenk, P.M., and Zahnle, K. On the Negligible Surface Age of Triton, Icarus 192(1):135–149, 2007. <doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2007.07.004>.

A young surface for triton, another active moon and unstable rings around neptune may all point to some ten million year old event affecting neptune and its moons. How does this support a recent creation? There is no connection, only suggestion. What else could it have been is rhetoric, not logic.

Uranus and Neptune both have magnetic fields significantly off-axis, which is an unstable situation. When this was discovered with Uranus, it was assumed by evolutionary astronomers that Uranus must have just happened to be going through a magnetic field reversal. However, when a similar thing was found with Neptune, this AD hoc explanation was upset. These observations are consistent with ages of thousands of years rather than billions.

In what way are they consistent? The instability may be caused by ongoing factors, such as the large amount of ammonia on both planets.^[17]

The orbit of Pluto is chaotic on a 20 million year time scale and affects the rest of the solar system, which would also become unstable on that time scale, suggesting that it must be much younger. (See: Rothman, T., God takes a nap, Scientific American 259(4):20, 1988).

PLUTO has a chaotic effect on the Solar System? Pluto, that is 2700 times smaller than Jupiter and orbits on the extreme fringes of the solar system 6 billion miles away from the sun, could disrupt the entire solar system? Oh come on...

The existence of short-period comets (orbital period less than 200 years), e.g. Halley, which have a life of less than 20,000 years, is consistent with an age of the solar system of less than 10,000 years. AD hoc hypotheses have to be invented to circumvent this evidence (see Kuiper Belt). See Comets and the age of the solar system.

...and the existence of long-period comets is consistent with an old age for the solar system. Incidentally the Kuiper belt isn't an ad hoc hypothesis, it really exists. Look, here's a picture of it!

"Near-infrared spectra of the Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar and the suspected Kuiper Belt Object, Charon, indicate both contain crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate. This watery material cannot be much older than 10 million years, which is consistent with a young solar system, not one that is 5 billion years old." See: The "waters above" .

Why does it have to be consistent with a young solar system? Current astronomical theory believes it to be the result of a collision with Pluto, leaving a mostly icy Chron orbiting a mostly rocky Pluto. A ten million year old collision is not evidence of a recent creation.

Lifetime of long-period comets (orbital period greater than 200 years) that are sun-grazing comets or others like Hyakutake or Hale–Bopp means they could not have originated with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. However, their existence is consistent with a young age for the solar system. Again an AD hoc Oort Cloud was invented to try to account for these comets still being present after billions of years. See, Comets and the age of the solar system.

The Oort Cloud might not exist, therefore Genesis is true. Which is it to be? A cloud of debris too far away to see sometimes sends comets towards the sun, or an invisible superbeing created the entire solar system a few thousand years ago? Which seems more likely?

The maximum expected lifetime of near-earth asteroids is of the order of one million years, after which they collide with the sun. And the Yarkovsky effect moves main belt asteroids into near-earth orbits faster than had been thought. This brings into question the origin of asteroids with the formation of the solar system (the usual scenario), or the solar system is much younger than the 4.5 billion years claimed. Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006.

And Jupiter pulls the asteroids towards itself in opposition, holding the Asteroid Belt stable. This guy has no idea of the complexity of orbits and periods and the number of ways gravity can influence things. His model is too simplistic to be anywhere close to reality.

The lifetime of binary asteroids—where a tiny asteroid "moon" orbits a larger asteroid— in the main belt (they represent about 15–17% of the total): tidal effects limit the life of such binary systems to about 100,000 years. The difficulties in conceiving of any scenario for getting binaries to form in such numbers to keep up the population, led some astronomers to doubt their existence, but space probes confirmed it (Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006).

If you can't imagine binary systems forming naturally but can imagine an invisible man setting it all up, you're not much of a scientist. Again it's a matter of which of the two possibilities is more likely.

The observed rapid rate of change in stars contradicts the vast ages assigned to stellar evolution. For example, Sakurai's Object in Sagittarius: in 1994, this star was most likely a white dwarf in the centre of a planetary nebula; by 1997 it had grown to a bright yellow giant, about 80 times wider than the sun (Astronomy & Astrophysics 321:L17, 1997). In 1998, it had expanded even further, to a red supergiant 150 times wider than the sun. But then it shrank just as quickly; by 2002 the star itself was invisible even to the most powerful optical telescopes, although it is detectable in the infrared, which shines through the dust (Muir, H., 2003, Back from the dead, New Scientist 177(2384):28–31).

Sakurai's object is one of several observed "born again" objects that are believed to be white dwarfs which undergo a second phase of swelling to become red giants. Its transient nature belies its origins as a star which first became a white dwarf prior to its swan song. Really not a good argument for a young universe.

The faint young sun paradox. According to stellar evolution theory, as the sun's core transforms from hydrogen to helium by means of nuclear fusion, the mean molecular weight increases, which would compress the sun's core increasing fusion rate. The upshot is that over several billion years, the sun ought to have brightened 40% since its formation and 25% since the appearance of life on earth. For the latter, this translates into a 16–18 °C temperature increase on the earth. The current average temperature is 15 °C, so the earth ought to have had a-2 °C or so temperature when life appeared. See: Faulkner, D., The young faint Sun paradox and the age of the solar system, Journal of Creation (TJ) 15(2):3–4, 2001.

Insolation is not the only factor which determines the surface temperature of a planet, as we are discovering here on Earth. It is simply not possible to perform this sort of simplified extrapolation.

Even if this were true, we're left wondering "so what?" At least one theory has it that life first formed around undersea geothermal vents. In this case insolation is totally irrelevant.

Cometesimals. From his studies, astronomer Louis Frank says that 100 million tonnes of water is being added to Earth every year in cometesimals (small comet remnants). This has strong implications for the supposed age of the oceans, if confirmed. See: Bergman, J., Advances in integrating cosmology: The case of cometesimals, Journal of Creation (CENTJ) 10(2):202–210, 1996.

Yes, and how much hydrogen do we lose annually in to space? This fairly ironic as "evidence" considering #75.

The giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn radiate more energy than they receive from the sun, suggesting a recent origin. Jupiter radiates almost twice as much energy as it receives from the sun, indicating that it may be less than 1 % of the presumed 4.5 billion years old solar system. Saturn radiates nearly twice as much energy per unit mass as Jupiter. See The age of the Jovian planets.

Jupiter generates significant quantities of internal heat through the well understood Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism. As a result of this heat radiation, Jupiter shrinks by 2 cm per year. Given that it is 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets put together, one can assume that it has happily been radiating more heat than it gets from the sun for a bit more than 6000 years. Fail...

Speedy stars are consistent with a young age for the universe. For example, many stars in the dwarf galaxies in the Local Group are moving away from each other at speeds estimated at to 10–12 km/s. At these speeds, the stars should have dispersed in 100 Ma, which, compared with the supposed 14,000 Ma age of the universe, is a short time. See Fast stars challenge big bang origin for dwarf galaxies.

Really, and how far out did you say those dwarf galaxies were? Several million light years? So it would take several million years for the light to get here. And how then does this support your young-earth argument? Oh, and where exactly does it say that stars can't have formed recently?

The ageing of spiral galaxies (much less than 200 million years) is not consistent with their supposed age of many billions of years. The discovery of extremely "young" spiral galaxies highlights the problem of this evidence for the evolutionary ages assumed.

First, see above. Second when arguing for a 6000 year old earth, it's probably best to leave dates of several hundred million years OUT of your argument.

The number of type I supernova remnants (SNRs) observable in our galaxy is consistent with an age of thousands of years, not millions or billions. See Davies, K., Proc. 3^rd ICC, pp. 175–184, 1994.

First, considering that we have found many third stage remnants (supernova over 20,000 years old), this argument doesn't hold water. Second, for even the most massive stars to reach the nova stage, millions of years would have had to have passed. Third that whole light takes time to travel to us thing puts every nova remnant we've found over 7000 light years from us.

The rate of expansion and size of supernovas indicates that all studied are young (less than 10,000 years). See supernova remnants.

The supernovae are anything but young. Light from the remnants takes several million years to reach us. If we were very close to the supernova, we would be incinerated. Something of this nature may have caused the Ordovician-Silurian event. The gamma ray burst in question came from about six thousand light years away. Aside from supernovae, deep space quasars have redshifts indicating they are as a far away as 2.44 billion light years.

Human population growth. Less than 0.5% p.a. growth from six people 4,500 years ago would produce today's population. Where are all the people? if we have been here much longer?

The calculation is flawed, as a 0.5% annual growth rate from 6 people 4,500 years ago provides 6 × 1.005⁴⁵⁰⁰ = 3.35 × 10¹⁰ people. [So some died - what's our point? 3 x 10^10 is 30 billion, right]

The world population growth for the last 40 years has been at 1.2-1.6% per year. Extrapolating back this gives 20,000 people in 4000 BCE.^[18] Indeed, where are all those people?

Playing with the creationists' figures gives some amusing results. Did you know that half the people in the entire world fought at the battle of Marathon, and immediately after the battle they have to go all the way to Warring States period China to fight the other half of the population??

The reality is that as we see in animals today, the human population was relatively static for much of our history. Only our technical advances in food production and medicine enable our extraordinary population growth rates.

"Stone age" human skeletons and artefacts. There are not enough for 100,000 years of a human population of just one million, let alone more people (10 million?). See Where are all the people?

Not all skeletons and artifacts are preserved. Stone arrowheads can be worn away or simply not found. Skeletons break down unless preserved by certain particular circumstances, as demonstrated by the lack of piles of bones cluttering the landscape. Considering the rarity of the fossilisation process (it requires very specific conditions) we are lucky to have any fossils at all. Even still, even a total absence of fossils would say little to nothing about the age of the world or evolution, it merely says something about fossilisation.

We also probably haven't found everything yet. That's what research is.

Length of recorded history. Origin of various civilizations, writing, etc., all about the same time several thousand years ago. See Evidence for a young world.

The civilisations we have discovered are less than 6000 years old, therefore the Earth is less than 6000 years old. This is a not-so-sly reference to the Great Flood based on false assumptions and falsely implying a correlation between this non-event and the advent of technologies of civilisation. Writing is a great metric for determining the age of civilisations. The oldest Sumerian cuneiform is from 4,000 BCE.^[19] Egyptians may have started using pictographic writing as early as 3,200-3,400 BCE.^[20] Of course, civilisations are things that require a very long time of organisation and political unification to set up, and therefore things that wouldn't turn up overnight. Thus, the flood theory simply raises the question of how writing and other complex technologies of civilisation arose relatively quickly after every human being on Earth was killed by a vengeful god. Answer: they didn't.

Further, consider the method of this argument. If you decide that writing is the only evidence for a civilization, then is it any surprise you will decide that there were no civilizations before the time writing was invented? Why not decide microwave popcorn is the only evidence for a civilization, and make the world even younger?

More fun can be had by applying the initial population growth rate given in 96 to their pre-existing numbers of post flood people (e.i. 8x1.005^N). This would put the population at a grand total of 22 two hundred years after the flood to build the Tower of Babel. At 1446 B.C.E, Moses led his 600,000 Israelites out of Egypt, representing 82600% of earth's population of 726. At Jesus' birth and Caesar's census, 1.5 million people total would have been on the planet.

Languages. Similarities in languages claimed to be separated by many tens of thousands of years speaks against the supposed ages (e.g. compare some aboriginal languages in Australia with languages in south-eastern India and Sri Lanka). See The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguistics.

It's unclear what the author means by "languages claimed to be separated by many tens of thousands of years." It's also unclear what the author means by the Tower of Babel 'fragmentation of tongues" account being confirmed by linguistics unless one lives prior to the widespread 19th century acceptance of the Indo-European language family.

Common cultural "myths" speak of recent separation of peoples around the world. An example of this is the frequency of stories of an earth-destroying flood.

These myths also speak of many gods - yet the argument here is not for polytheism, is it? Why isn't this evidence for the almost ubiquitous Earth Mother figure instead? Widely dispersed cultures have mythology that share many different tropes. Quest mythology is almost universal, but no one would argue that these are all remembrances of a single ancestral quest for one particular mythical object.

Anyway, there is catastrophic flood story in the mythology of many cultures, including the ancient Egyptians and the Celts, while the Mayans' flood myth told of a flood of resin drowning wooden people. Meanwhile, the Germanic legends speak of two global floods, and the Chinese and Polynesians had several each. It is useful to note that, to early cultures, "the whole world" simply meant the world they knew of; this means that a massive local flood would end up being called a "global" flood - in the sense of "flooding the whole world - that we know of". It is also interesting that so many evangelical Christians believe so firmly that their flood story is the "true" version, and not the legends of other cultures, all things being equal.

It is also important to note that a surprisingly large number of some of the most ancient civilizations began in river valleys with frequent flooding (Egypt, Mesopotamia, China). When Sumeria was flooded every year by its local rivers, was it any surprise that their Epic of Gilgamesh speaks of a mighty flood?

Origin of agriculture. Secular dating puts it at about 10,000 years and yet that same chronology says that modern man has supposedly been around for at least 200,000 years. Surely someone would have worked out much sooner how to sow seeds of plants to produce food. See: Evidence for a young world.

A classic argument from incredulity. While there are any number of other things the author does not understand, being a bit on the slow side does not, on its own, support a recent creation. Archaeological and anthropological support for the idea that the advent of technologies for sustained agriculture coincide with an explosion in the frequency of other technologies essential for the development of civilization is not controversial.

Hunter-gatherer societies persist even now in the 21st century, and even after contact with outside cultures that have knowledge of agriculture. Indeed, many peoples choose to retain their traditional way of life even if it means living without certain modern conveniences, e.g. the Sami in northern Europe. The knowledge of agriculture does not necessarily predispose a people to adopt it as a way of life, nor does every type of terrain lend itself to agriculture. People living in jungles are far less likely than plainspeople to adopt an agrarian lifestyle.

Other cultural advances that seem obvious to us today also have relatively late origins. For example, coinage replacing barter did not happen until 900BCE at the earliest.