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Creation 34(3):28–29, July 2012

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Moon madness

Spurious billions-of-years lunar ‘ages’

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How old is our moon? Actually, no-one can ‘measure’ the moon’s age. However, the usual assumption is uniformitarianism, i.e. that ‘the present is the key to the past’ (the view of the Bible skeptics in 2 Peter 3:4b). And so they claim, on that basis, that the moon’s age is of the order of four-and-a-half billion years.

However, here are four uniformitarian ‘measures’, that by any measure, expose the contradictions in the billions of years lunar ‘dating’.

Recession of the moon from the earth

Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at a rate of 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon could never have been closer than 18,400 km (11,500 miles), known as the Roche Limit, because Earth’s tidal forces (due to gravity) would have shattered it. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance—only one-quarter of the claimed evolutionary age.1 Of course if it was created near where it is now, there is no need for vast periods of time.

Ghost craters

Ghost craters on the moon’s maria (singular mare: dark ‘seas’ formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for long ages. Enormous impacts apparently caused the lava flows, but not before other, smaller, impact craters formed within the larger craters. These can be seen as ‘ghosts’ under the lava flows. But this means that the smaller impacts can’t have been very long after the huge ones, otherwise the lava would have hardened before the impacts. So it was a very short time frame for the cratering. This also implies that other cratered bodies of our solar system are also much younger than assumed.2

Recently-formed scarps

NASA’s surveys have revealed scarps (steep slopes) due to faulting, thought to be due to shrinking of the moon. These scarps are global and their freshness and lack of cratering suggest very recent origin. However, such recent tectonic movements should not be possible if the moon has been cold and ‘dead’ for at least two billion years.3

Recent volcanic activity

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.4

Note that we are not saying that any of these evidences give us an actual age of the moon. All we can say from such a uniformitarian approach is that the contradictions between all such ‘measures’ show that we can’t trust any of them—that there is something seriously wrong with the assumption that ‘the present is the key to the past’!

The only reliable means of knowing the age of the moon (or anything else in the cosmos, or on Earth) is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed its formation. Only the Bible with its Creation account from the Creator Himself can inform us as to the moon’s true age. Formed on Day 4 of Creation Week, our moon is just a few days younger than our Earth, i.e. about 6,000 years old. The real (biblical) past is the key to understanding the present!

Posted on homepage: 21 September 2013

References and notes

  1. Sarfati, J., The Moon the light that rules the night, Creation 20(4):36–39, 1998; creation.com/moon. Return to text.
  2. Walker, T. and Catchpoole, D., Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframe, Creation 31(3):18, 2009; creation.com/lunar-volcanoes (see box and references therein). Return to text.
  3. Watters, T.R., and 10 others, Evidence of Recent Thrust Faulting on the Moon Revealed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Science 329(5994):936–940, 20 August 2010. See also: Walker, T., NASA pictures support biblical origin for Moon, creation.com/nasa-shrinking-moon, 2 September 2010. Return to text.
  4. See: DeYoung, D., Transient lunar phenomena: a permanent problem for evolutionary models of Moon formation, J. Creation 17(1):5–6, 2003; also ref. 2. And see further corroboration: Kerr, R., At Long Last, Moon’s Core ‘Seen’; news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow, 6 January 2011. Return to text.