by Bill Nugent
Article #36
The impossibility of Darwinian evolution becomes more and more apparent as scientific knowledge increases. In this article we will take a brief look at the mounting scientific evidence for a young age of planet earth.
If Darwinian evolution took place it would have required in excess of a billion years for “simple” life to form at random and then progress into higher forms of life by random mutation. If the true age of the earth is measured in thousands, not billions of years then evolution would not have had enough time to take place.
It may come as a surprise that the overwhelming majority of natural “clocks” do in fact point to a young age of the earth. One such clock is the rate of the salinization of the oceans. The rate of the salinization and mineralization of the oceans has been accurately calculated.
Rivers and streams carry dissolved minerals from all the continents into the oceans. Water evaporates from the ocean surface but the dissolved minerals remain. If the earth was billions of years old or even just 100 million years old the ocean waters would be supersaturated with mineral salts and vast halite deposits would have accumulated on the shoreline.
The oceans would be saltier than the Dead Sea. Thus a young age of the earth is clearly indicated. (see Austin & Humphreys The Sea’s Missing Salt: A Dilemma for Evolutionists, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Creationism, Vol. 2, 1991, pp.17-33; and John D. Morris, Ph. D. The Young Earth, Colorado Springs: Master Books 1994, pp. 85-87.)
Other evidence comes from analyzing the rate at which the sun consumes fuel to produce energy. Long after Darwin’s theory of evolution and an old age for planet earth became entrenched in scientific dogma, physicists discovered fusion. It is now known that the sun uses the process of fusion to produce energy.
The sun puts out 3.9 X 10 to the 33rd power ergs per second by fusing hydrogen atoms to form helium and higher elements. The first step, in which hydrogen is fused to form helium, produces 95% of the sun’s energy. Fusion, though far more efficient than combustion, nevertheless consumes fuel. Fusion can’t go on endlessly. The sun burns off 4 million tons of hydrogen per second. The sun also throws off billions of tons of matter during solar storms which occur frequently.
John A. Eddy (of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and High Altitude Observatory, Boulder, Colorado) and Aram A. Boornazian (a mathematician with S. Ross & Co. Boston) have documented the fact that the sun is shrinking at a rate of about 0.1% per century. This fact has been established by the analysis of data compiled by the Greenwich Observatory over the years 1836-1953 and also from 400 year old eclipse observations. If the sun is contracting as it burns fuel it means that the sun was larger in the past.
Eddy and Boornazian have calculated that 100,000 years ago the sun would have been about twice its present size and would have made the earth far too hot to sustain life. This is compelling evidence that life on earth could not possibly have been in existence for the length of time necessary for evolution to occur. This evidence of the sun’s contraction strongly implies a recent creation of sun and earth. Eddy and Boornazian have been criticized by some scientists who examined their evidence but other scientists have put forward evidence that the sun is shrinking. (See Tornado In A Junkyard by James Perloff quoting from an article in Physics Today.)
The salinization of the oceans and the contraction of the sun are just two examples of analyses that indicate a recent creation of earth. There are many more that can be cited. Many books, including an excellent one entitled The Young Earth by John Morris, Ph. D. have been written about the evidence for a young earth.
The Bible’s reckoning of time is accurate. The Genesis account of creation is not a vague allegory that must be figuratively interpreted. The Bible gives a clear and sensible historical account of God’s creation of all things.