HYDER / F98
 

A. Creation Model Age Predictions:

1. All things were created 6000 to 10,000 years ago.

2. A world-wide flood cataclysm occurred 4,000 to 8,000 years ago.

B. Evidences of a young creation:

C20 - ( book "Scientific Creationism" by Dr. Henry M. Morris; Master Books; 1985)

p151 - Efflux of helium into the atmosphere:

1.75E5 yrs (if use efflux as 5E9 gms/yr estimated by Cook)

several thousands yrs (if use efflux as 3E11 gms/yr by Faul)

conclusion: age of Earth's atmosphere is at most 1.75E5 yrs old but could be as young as several thousands years.

p151 - Influx of meteoric material from space:

14 E6 tons per year for 5 million years would accumulate a layer of meteoritic dust approx. 182 feet thick all over Earth & the moon. Only a thin layer was found on the moon indicating a young moon. The only way of accounting for the small amount of meteoritic nickel found in the earth's crust & ocean would be an age for the earth of only a few thousand years.

p153 - Influx of materials into the ocean by Riley & Skirrow:

Chemical Years to Accumulate in Ocean from River Inflow

Sodium 260,000,000

Magnesium 45,000,000

Silicon 8,000

Potassium 11,000,000

Copper 50,000

Gold 560,000

Silver 2,100,000

Mercury 42,000

Lead 2,000

Tin 100,000

Nickel 18,000

Uranium 500,000

Ocean sediment 75,000,000

Continents eroded to sea level 14,000,000

Water amount in ocean 340,000,000

Conclusion: The maximum age of the earth is 340,000,000 years but it could be only several thousands years old.

p156 - Efflux of Materials from the Mantle into the Crust:

It is assumed that at least 10 cubic km of new igneous rocks are formed each year by flows from the earth's mantle. The total volume of the earth's crust is about 5 E9 cubic km. Thus, the entire crust could have been formed by volcanic activity at present rates in only 500 million yrs.

p 157 - Decay of Earth's Magnetic Field

Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, Professor of Physics at UTEP ... pointed out that the strength of the magnetic field has been measured carefully for 135 years ... and has shown through analytical & statistical studies that it has been decaying exponentially during that period with a most-probable half-life of 1400 years ... only 7000 years ago it must have been 32 times as strong. It is almost inconceivable that it ever could have been much stronger than this. 10,000 years ago the earth would have had a magnetic field as strong as that of a magnetic star. This is highly improbable.

Thus 10,000 years seems to be an outside limit for the age of the earth.

p158 - There are many astronomic processes which point to a recent origin of the solar system (e.g., the continued presence of short-period comets in the solar system, when available measurements indicate such comets dissipate and disappear in about 10,000 years):

Conclusion: the solar system and thus the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

p164/5 - The radiocarbon ratio ... is still building up in the world environment, for the reason that the required 30,000 years have not yet passed ... the radiocarbon assay is still increasing ... The initial time, turns out to be only 10,000 years ago. This is the radiocarbon date, therefore, for the age of the present atmosphere, and probably for the earth itself.

p167/8/9 - Population Statistics:

An average population growth of 1/2 % per year would give the present population in just 4000 years. This is only 1/4 the present rate ... the creation model of human chronology fits the facts very well and is quite conservative.

Conclusion: man has been on the earth for less than 10,000 years and the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

p169/170 - Age of the Sun:

Evidence now exists that even the sun must be quite young, obtained both from direct measurements of its diameter and indirectly through the now well-documented absence of the expected flux of solar neutrinos that should have been generated in its interior. ... the sun is shrinking at such a rate that, if the decline did not reverse, our local star would disappear within a 100,000 years. ... If it were only decreasing at 1/5 this rate, it would have been twice its present size a million yrs ago. The Sun is bound to be very young.

p209/210 - Appearance of Age: The creation was "mature" from its birth. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. God formed it full-grown in every respect, including even Adam & Eve as mature individuals when they were first formed. The whole universe had an "appearance of age" right from the start ... the light from the sun, moon and stars was shining upon the earth as soon as they were created, since their very purpose was " ... to give light on the earth"

p 247 - The date of the creation, as obtained by simple addition of the figures given in the Bible, was ... around 4000 B.C. The date of the Flood on this basis was around 2350 B.C.
[thus age of Earth = 4000 +1998 = 5998          or about 6,000 years        or less than 10,000 years]
 
 

C21 - ("The Age of the Earth's Atmosphere"; Larry Vardiman, Ph.D.; Institute for Creation Research; 1990; monograph)

p26 - "Cook was among the first to recognize the problem with helium in the atmosphere when he asks "Where is the earth's radiogenic helium? ... the helium problem ... leads ... to an anomalous atmospheric chronometry ..."

..."the time required to reach the helium concentration of today's atmosphere would be 1.76 million years.

p27 - "An alternative to the long-age model, and one which runs counter to the basic assumption of the evolutionary/uniformitarian model, is that the earth's atmosphere is relatively young, less than 10,000 years" ... "The lack of an escape mechanism and the likelihood that he helium we observe in the atmosphere is primordial, provides evidence that the earth's atmosphere is quite young."

p28 - "If the earth's atmosphere had no helium when it was formed, the current measured column density of helium (1.1 E20 atoms/sq cm) would have been produced in about 2 million years." ... I believe the source for this problem is the assumption that the earth's atmosphere is billions of years old. An alternative model is that the atmosphere is relatively young, less than 10,000 years, and that the helium content of the atmosphere is almost completely primordial."
 
 

C. Positive evidence for the instantaneous creation of the earth:

p.170 of "Scientific Creationism" ... massive evidence accumulated by physicist Robert Gentry, from granite rocks all over the world, of "parentless" polonium, indicated by "radiohalos" of polonium without the corresponding halos of the uranium from which polonium is normally derived by radioactive decay. Since polonium has an extremely short half-life [210 = 138 d, 212 = 45.1 s, 214 = 163.69 micro s, 216 = 150 m s] it should not be found in nature except with its uranium parent. Nevertheless, its halos are so found, in the earth's primordial granitic rocks everywhere. There seems no possible explanation for this phenomenon except essentially INSTANTANEOUS CREATION of these primordial rocks together with the short-lived polonium atoms enclosed within them, leaving their decay halos as a permanent silent witness to the fact of the intitial fiat creation of the primordial rocks."
 
 

D. Scientific Creationism arguments against an "old Earth":

E4 - ("Astronomy Today" by Chaisson; Prentice Hall; 3rd ed, 1999)

On page 339 is the statement that our Solar System was formed "4.6 billion years ago". On page 197 a similar age is assigned to the Earth's moon and an age of 3.2 billion years is assigned to the age of the youngest maria.

On page 331 it is stated that "almost all meteorites are old. Direct radioactive dating shows most of them to be between 4.4 and 4.6 billion years old." On page 158 is read "The most ancient rocks on Earth are dated at 3.9 billion years old. ... The radioactive-dating technique rests on the assumption that the rock has remained solid while the radioactive decays have been going on."

On page 158, in More Precisely 7-2, Radioactive Dating is explained in general details. "... The half-life is the name given to the time required for half of a sample of parent nuclei to disintegrate. ... Every radioactive isotope has its own half-life ... the half-life of uranium-235 is 713 million years, and that of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years.

... The decay of unstable radioactive nuclei into more stable daughter nuclei provides us with a useful tool for measuring the ages of any rocks we can get our hands on. The first step is to measure the amount of stable nuclei of a given kind (for example, lead-206, which results from the decay of uranium-238). This amount is then compared with the amount of remaining unstable parent nuclei (in this case U-238) from which the daughter nuclei descended. Knowing the rate (or half-life) at which the disintegration occurs, the age of the rock then follows directly. ... In practice, ages can be determined by these means to within an accuracy of a few percentage points."
 
 
 
 

C20 - (Scientific Creationism)

p137 "In attempting to determine the real age of the earth, it should always be remembered that recorded history began only several thousand years ago. Not even uranium dating is capable of experimental verification, since no one could actually watch uranium decaying for millions of years to see what happens.

In order to obtain a prehistoric date, it is necessary to use some kind of physical process which operates slowly enough to measure and steadily enough to produce significant changes. If certain ASSUMPTIONS are made about it, then it can yield a date which could be called the apparent age. Whether or not the apparent age is really the true age depends completely on the validity of the assumptions.

Since there is no way in which the assumptions can be tested, there is no sure way (except by divine revelation) of knowing the true age of any geologic formation.

p138 - As far as the age of geological formations and of the earth itself are concerned, only radioactive decay processes are considered useful today by evolutionists. ... the most important ones are:

1. The various uranium-thorium-lead methods

2. The rubidium-strontium method

3. The potassium-argon method

... the following assumptions must be made:

1. The system must have been a closed system

2. The system must initially have contained none of its daughter component

3. The process rate must always have been the same

... the highly speculative nature of all methods of geochronometry becomes apparent when one realizes that not one of the above assumptions is valid. None are provable, or testable, or even reasonable.

1. There is no such thing in nature as a closed system.

2. It is impossible to ever know the initial components of a system formed in prehistoric times.

3. No process rate is unchangeable.

p139 - ... The most important method is uranium dating since ... it is the one against which others have been calibrated. The uranium method has been used to assign a so-called "absolute time" date to the earth's supposed oldest rocks, and thus is the main support for widely accepted idea that the earth is about 4.5 to 5 billion years old.

p140 - ... (for Uranium) the 3 assumptions discussed are invalid. There are serious difficulties, if not outright fallacies, in the lead age determinations:

a. Uranium minerals always exist in open systems, not closed. Uranium is easily leachable by groundwater. The intermediate element, radon gas, can easily move in or out of a uranium system. There are, in fact, various ways by which the components of this type of system can enter or leave it.

b. The uranium decay rates may well be variable.

c. The daughter products were probably present from the beginning.

p144 - "in those cases of igneous rocks whose age is actually known, the uranium method gives ages which are aeons too large, and since other uranium minerals are normally found in igneous rocks formed by the same kind of process, therefore it is very probable that their uranium ages also will be aeons too large for the same reasons.
Why should uranium ages be assumed correct when applied to rocks of unknown age when they are always tremendously in error when calculated on rocks of known age?

d.Uranium dating gives discordant results which must be corrected by paleontology. It is common to find that the several ages that are obtainable from a suite of uranium-thorium-lead isotopes are either discordant among themselves or "anomalous" with respect to the assumed age of the formation. Therefore, they must be either corrected to the assumed "true" age, or discarded as hopelessly discrepant. With so many sources of contamination and change, this is not surprising. The few that are actually concordant and consistent can be easily correlated with the creation-cataclysm model.

The point to be stressed here is that the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record is the factor that really determines the acceptable age of a rock (acceptable to evolutionists, that is).

p149 ..."None of these processes (radio-active dating) gives any very good evidence, and certainly do not prove that the earth is very old"
 
 

D. Examples of discordant Radioactive Dating results:

C20 - (book "Scientific Creationism")

p141 - "... unless the system is known to have been a closed system through all the ages since its formation, its age readings are meaningless. A similar problem has been pointed out in connection with the dating of lunar rocks. 'If all of the age-dating methods (rubidium-strontium, uranium-lead and potassium-argon) had yielded the same ages, the picture would be neat. But they haven't. The lead ages, for example, have been consistently older. This led Leon T. Silver, of the California Institute of Technology, to study the temperatures at which lead volatilizes (vaporizes) and moves out of the lunar sample. Theoretically, this could happen on the moon and this volatized lead would become parentless - separated from its uranium parent. More lead (parentless lead added to the material) would yield older ages. [source = Evelyn Driscoll, "Dating of Moon Samples: Pitfalls & Paradoxes" Science News, Vol. 101, Jan 1, 1972, p12]

p141 - "... An even more important phenomenon by which these balances can be upset is that of free-neutron-capture, by which free neutrons in the mineral's environment may be captured by the lead in the system to change the isotopic value of the lead. That is, Lead 206 may be converted into Lead 207, and Lead 207 into Lead 208 by this process. ... Thus, the relative amounts of these radiogenic isotopes of lead in the system may not be a function of their decay from thorium & uranium at all, but rather a function of the amount of free neutrons in the environment.

p142 - That this problem is quite serious has been shown conclusively by Dr. Melvin Cook [ M.A. Cook, Prehistory & Earth Models; London: Max Parrish & Co., Ltd., 1960, pp. 53-60] who has analyzed two of the world's most importan uranium bearing ores with this in view. ... according to Dr. Cook ... literally all of the so-called radiogenic isotopes of lead found in uranium-thorium systems anywhere can be accounted for by this process alone. Thus, none of them need have been formed by radioactive decay at all, and consequently the minerals may all be quite young, with essentially zero age."

p142 - "The uranium decay rates may well be variable. Writers on this subject commonly stress the invariability of radioactive decay rates, but the fact is these rates, as well as all others, are subject to change. Since they are controlled by atomic structure, they are not as easily affected as other processes, but factors which can influence atomic structures and processes can also influence radio-active decay rates. The most obvious example of such a factor is cosmic radiation and its production of neutrinos. Another would be the free neutrons discussed above. If anything happens to increase the incidence of these particles in the earth's crust, there is no doubt that radioactive decay rates would be accelerated.

Phenomena such as these would be generated by such events as the reversal of the earth's magnetic field or super-nova explosions in nearby stars. Since such phenomena are commonly accepted now as having occurred in the past ... there is a very real possibility that radioactive decay rates were much higher at various intervals in the past than they are at present."

p143 - "comments by Dr. Fred Jueneman, who is director of research for the Innovative Concepts Association. 'Being so close, the anisotropic neutrino flux of the super-explosion must have had the peculiar characteristic of resetting all our atomic clocks. This would knock our Carbon-14, Patassium-Argon, and Uranium-lead dating measurements into a cocked hat! The age of prehistoric artifacts, the age of the earth, and that of the universe would be thrown into doubt.'"

p143 - "The daughter products were probably present from the beginning. There is no way of being sure that the radiogenic daughter products of uranium and thorium decay were not present in these minerals when they were first formed. This possibility is most evident in the case of modern volcanic rocks. Such rocks, formed by lava flows from the earth's interior mantle, commonly contain uranium minerals and these, more often than not, are found to have radiogenic, as well as common, leads with them when the lava first cools and the minerals crystallize.

Sidney P. Clementson, a British engineer, has recently made a detailed study [S.P. Clementson, 'a Critical Examination of Radioactive Dating of Rocks'; Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 7; Dec 1970; pp. 137-141]

of such modern volcanic rocks and their uranium ages, as published in Soviet geophysical journals and other papers, and has shown that in all such cases the uranium-lead ages were vastly older than the true ages of the rocks.
Most of them gave ages of over a billion years, even though the lava rocks were known to have been formed in modern times. This is clear, unequivocal evidence that, as Clementson says: 'Calculated ages give no indication whatever of the age of the host rocks.'"

p144 - "...inference: since, in those cases of igneous rocks whose age is actually known, the uranium method gives ages which are aeons too large, and since other uranium minerals are normally found in igneous rocks formed by the same kind of process, therefore it is very probable that their uranium ages also will be aeons too large, for the same reasons. Why should uranium ages be assumed correct when applied to rocks of unknown age when they are always tremendously in error when calculated on rocks of known age?"

p144 - "Uranium dating gives discordant results which must be corrected by paleontology. It is common to find that the several ages that are either discordant among themselves or anomalous with respect to the assumed age of the formation. Therefore, they must be either corrected to the assumed 'true age', or discarded as hopelessly discrepant. With so many sources of contamination and change, this is not surprising. The few that are actually concordant and consistent can be easily correlated with the creation-cataclysm model. ... the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record is the factor that really determines the acceptable age of a rock (acceptable to evolutionists, that is)."

"The most reasonable age can be selected only after careful consideration of independent geochronologic data as well as field, stratigraphic & paleontologic (fossil) evidence, and the petrographic & paragenetic relations" [L.R. Stieff, T.W. Stern & R.N. Eichler, 'Algebraic & Graphic Methods for Evaluating Discordant Lead-Isotope Ages,' U.S. Geological Survey Professional Papers, No. 414-E, 1963]

p145 - "And what essentially is this actual time-scale? On what criteria does it rest? When all is winnowed out and the grain reclaimed from the chaff, it is certain that the grain in the product is mainly the paleontologic (fossils) record and highly likely that the physical evidence is the chaff." [E.M. Spieker, 'Mountain-Building Chronology and the Nature of the Geologic Time-Scale.' Bulletin, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Vol. 40, Aug 1956, p. 1806]

p145 - The Potassium-Argon Method. "The method most widely used for dating rocks is the potassium-argon method. ... This process also involves a considerable number of serious problems ... (a) It must be calibrated by uranium-lead dating ... Consequently, potassium dating can at best be only as accurate as uranium dating, which ... is
not accurate at all."

(b) The potassium-argon system is an open system. "Since Argon 40 is a gas, it is obvious that it can easily migrate in & out of potassium minerals."

p146 - "Not only is the argon content subject to alteration, however. Potassium also is quite mobile. 'The potassium-argon ages of the meteorites investigated ranged from 5E9 (5 bil) to 15.6E9 (15.6 bil) years ... As much as 80 per cent of the potassium in a small sample of an iron meteorite can be removed by distilled water in 4.5 hours.'[J.F. Evernden, D.E. Savage, G.H. Curtis & G.T. James, 'K/A Dates and the Cenozoic Mammalian Chronology of North America,' American Journal of Science, Vol. 262, Feb 1964, p. 154]

(c) The decay rate of potassium is subject to change ... for the same reasons that uranium decay rates are subject to acceleration.

(d) Argon may be incorporated with potassium at time of formation ... there is an abundance of argon available and no doubt at least some of the Argon 40 in every potassium mineral has been derived from the environment rather than from the decay process ... that this possibility is very real is indicated by the following study made on submarine Hawaiian basaltic rocks of known age by the Hawaiian Institute of Geophysics 'The radiogenic argon & helium contents of 3 basalts erupted into the deep ocean from an active volcano (Kilauea) have been measured.
Ages calculated from these measurements increase with sample depth up to 22 million years for lavas deduced to be recent. Caution is urged in applying dates from deep-ocean basalts in studies on ocean-floor spreading.' [C.S. Noble & J.J. Naughton, 'Deep-Ocean Basalts: Inert Gas Content & Uncertainties in Age Dating' Science, Vol. 162; Oct 11, 1968), p.265] ... Actually the dates of these basaltic rocks were known to be less than 200 years old!"

p147 - "Similar modern rocks formed in 1801 near Hualalei, Hawaii, were found to give potassium-argon ages ranging from 160 million years to 3 billion years ... 'It is possible that some of the abnormally high potassium-argon ages reported by other investigators for ultrabasic rocks may be caused by the presence of excess argon contained in fluid and gaseous inclusions' [J.G. Funkhouser & J.J. Naughton, Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 73; July 15, 1968; p. 4606]

Still another study on Hawaiian basalts obtained seven ages of these basalts ranging all the way from zero years to 3.34 million years ... the authors, by an obviously unorthodox application of statistical reasoning, felt justified in recording the age of the basalts as 250,000 years.

... if this is known to have happened so frequently in rocks of known age, it probably also happened frequently in rocks of unknown age ... it seems clear that potassium-argon ages are meaningless insofar as true ages are concerned."

... 'It is now well known that K-Ar ages obtained from different minerals in a single rock may be strikingly discordant.' [Joan C. Engels, "Effects of Sample Purity on Discordant Mineral Ages Found in K-Ar Dating", Journal of Geology, Vol. 79; Sept. 1971; p.609]

p148 - Rubidium-Strontium Dating ... it must be calibrated against the uranium method and therefore can be no more reliable, at best, than uranium dating.

C22 - (book "Science, Scripture & the Young Earth"; Dr. Henry M. Morris & Dr. John D. Morris; ICR; 1989)

p75 - "A vivid demonstration of the inaccuracies of the rubidium-strontium isochron dating technique has resulted from a two-pronged ICR research project. Isotopic ratios have been published for numerous lava samples taken from the Grand Canyon. "Ages" for these rocks can be calculated from those ratios, and show that the lava flows on the plateau above the Canyon are older (supposedly 1.5 billion years old) than the lavas deeply buried at the bottom of the Canyon (dated at 1.1 billion years)" [Dr. Stevan A. Austin; Grand Canyon Lava Flows: A Survey of Isotope Dating Methods, ICR Impact No. 178,1988]

p40 - Fred Jueneman (who is not a creationist) states: "The age of our globe is presently thought to be some 4.5 billion years, based on radio-decay rates of uranium and thorium. Such confirmation may be shortlived, ... There has been in recent years the horrible realization that radio-decay rates are not as constant as previously thought, nor are they immune to environmental influences. And this could mean that the atomic clocks are reset during some global disaster, and events which brought the Mesozoic to a close may not be 65 million years ago, but rather, within the age and memory of man" [Frederick B. Jueneman, "Secular Catastrophism," Industrial Research and Development, June 1982, p. 21]

p42 - Geologist John Woodmorappe, M.S., has collected the following inadvertent admissions from the geological literature (private communication):

"In general, dates in the 'correct ball park' are assumed to be correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully explained" [R.L. Mauger, "K-Ar Ages of Biotites from Tuffs in Eocene Rocks of the Green River, Washakie & Uinta Basins'; Contributions to Geology, Wyoming University, Vol. 15(1), 1997, p.37]

"In conventional interpretation of K-Ar age data, it is common to discard ages which are substantially too high or too low compared with the rest of the group or with other available data such as the geological time scale. The discrepancies between the rejected and the accepted are arbitrarily attributed to excess or loss of argon." [A. Hayatsu, "K-Ar Isochron Age of the North Mountain Basalt, Nova Scotia," Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 16, 1979, p.974]

"... if one believes that the derived ages in particular instances are in gross disagreement with established facts of field geology, he must conjure up geological processes that could cause anomalous or altered argon contents of the minerals" [J.P. Evernden & J.R. Richards, "Potassium-Argon Ages in Eastern Australia,"Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, vol. 9, No. 1, 1962, p.3]

p50 - "After an extensive discussion of the questionable assumptions in the various radiometric dating methods, an evolutionist professor [an old-earth evolutionist & a doctrinaire anti-creationist] at the University of California (Santa Barbara) concludes:

'It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological "clock."' [William D. Stansfield, The Science of Evolution; New Your, Macmillan, 1997; p.84]