Readers’ commentsJoe F., United States, 13 February 2012
When speaking of the high percentage of scientists who believe in an old earth, your questioner should also be aware that this has happened before. Probably an even higher percentage at the time of Galileo believed in geocentrism, as opposed to the heliocentrism of Copernicus and Galileo. In fact, it was the professors and scientists of establishment science who sought to silence Galileo. They used the power of the church to protect their paradigm and silence him, as it was the only entity that could do so. Today, they use government and school administrations the same way. Scientific paradigms were difficult to change then, and they still are. But numbers don’t add up to truth, and we can’t allow scientific laws and theories to be set by popular vote.
E. M., United States, 15 February 2012
Like Andy Capp said long ago,"It's a mug's game."
Ken B., Australia, 25 February 2012
"As it stands for now, I would not dispute an atheist’s claim that the earth is billions of years old, that dinosaurs lived and became extinct before man was created, etc. I’d LIKE to be able to dispute it but right now I don’t have the grounds for it. I’m sitting on the fence, although leaning towards Young-Earth purely in hope." (Anthony C.)
I would like to offer Anthony something which I have found helpful. It has to do with geology which is pretty much the first area of science to be hijacked by evolutionists with the idea of billions of years.
About 70% of the earth's landmass is covered with sedimentary layers. In some places these deposits are thousands of metres deep and many extend over hundreds of kilometres in each direction.
Questions:
Where did all the sediment come from? How did it get there? How come it is sorted so nicely?
Did the sediment derive from previously solid rocks, like basalt or granite? This is highly likely, given the identifiable similarities in mineral composition. Most people seem to agree on this.
How was hard rock broken down into fine particles? Erosion is the likely explanation. Water jets can be used to cut steel if the pressure and velocity are high enough. On the destructive side, water flow can damage propellers, turbines and structures. 'Cavitation' is usually the culprit - high velocity produces localized low pressure resulting in vaporization of the fluid with associated extremely high temperatures and shock waves.
Take a look at this article http://creation.com/beware-the-bubbles-burst
Even in roadside drains and small streams, scouring can be an issue. The scouring velocity in soils can be 0.5 metres per second or less. Compare this with velocities in turbine nozzles which can be 1000 m/s or more.
OK, so we need massive amounts of energy to convert vast quantities of rock into fine particles. If water is the tool, then we end up with water and sediment churning along together - murky water at the least and maybe of slurry consistency if the sediment-carrying capacity is high enough.
What about the process of depositing/sedimentation? Evolutionists claim that it was a batch process - that the layers were deposited one by one with a gap of maybe a year between layers. Suppose a layer is 0.2mm thick and the depth of deposit is 1000 metres. That would represent 5 million years of deposits. Hence the millions (or billions) of years the evolutionists invoke.
A few years ago I built a house on a steep block. The house footprint covered most of the block. This presented a logistics problem. I had to remove beautiful topsoil, but had no-where to store it. I had to truck it offsite. Then, when the building was finished, guess what, I had to truck back in all the topsoil I needed for the gardens.
Let's think through the logistics of the sedimentary process. For water to deposit fine sediment, the velocity has to be extremely low. If a scouring velocity is say 0.5 m/sec, then the sedimentation velocity has to be less than that. So, for the process of sedimentation to occur, a very still environment (low energy) is needed. Remember, we had an extremely high energy environment to create the sediment. In the evolutionary view, these operations of scour and deposit (high energy/low energy) occurred over vast areas, ultimately covering most of the earth's surface, not just once but many times, sequentially.
How were the high energy and low energy actions separated from each other? Where was the sediment stored? How was the material transported from the high-energy to the low-energy site? After one layer was deposited, how was the next layer brought in without destroying the former? Problem: Incoming suspension velocity exceeds the scouring velocity of the previous layer.
What would happen if, after successfully depositing thousands of layers over thousands of years (if that were possible), there was a bit of a dust-storm, or maybe a tropical downpour? You would have to start all over again. Of course that plays into the evolutionists' desire for vast eons of time.
I believe the answer is that the process was not of the sequential/batch type at all.
Could it have been a dynamic process? Could the high energy scouring have been followed by a lower energy suspension stage, then a dynamic process of depositing as the velocity continued to drop? Could this solve the logistics problem?
Take a look at these experiments where multiple layers are deposited along a forward-moving front. http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j12_2/j12_2_218-221.pdf (the picture at Figure 3 is explanatory)
Clearly we can't re-run what happened in Noahs flood, but we do know that there was immense, high-energy geological and hydraulic activity going on all over the earth. We do know that the waters receded over several months. We do know that the earth's crust bears signs of such a global catastrophe.
I also know that when I ask people who believe in long-ages about this, they haven't even thought about the problems inherent in their position. In a similar way, when they claim fossils are evidence against the Bible, they really haven't thought through what they are claiming.
I know there is plenty we can't explain, but when I look at the evidence I come away with even more confidence in the Bible and more saddened by the evolutionary paradigm that has become sacred in our nation.
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