Evidences for a Young Earth

The ultimate reason for my belief that the universe is relatively young and not billions of years old is the consistent exegesis of the text of Scripture. But in addition to that, I believe there are observable and scientific reasons for holding to a young earth form of creationism. While many possible evidences could be brought up, the four examples I would like to mention here are: “Old” DNA and the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, living bacteria in the stomachs of insects trapped in resin, the presence of Carbon-14 in fossils and diamonds, and the existence of comets.

Fragments of DNA have been found in the remains of insects, plants, fish, and dinosaurs dated from 25 to 120 million years old. One example of this phenomenon is the work of Mary Schweitzer on the discovery of blood vessels and blood cells in dinosaur bones. Walt Brown quotes from some of the published articles on the subject: “‘I got goose bumps,’ recalls [Mary] Schweitzer. ‘It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. I said to the lab technician: The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?’” (Virginia Morell, “Dino DNA: The Hunt and the Hype,” Science, Vol. 261, 9 July 1993, p. 160). “Soft tissues are preserved within hindlimb elements of Tyrannosaurus rex (Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125). Removal of the mineral phase reveals transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels …” (Mary H. Schweitzer et al., “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus Rex,” Science, Vol. 307, 25 March 2005, p. 1952). “‘I am quite aware that according to conventional wisdom and models of fossilization, these structures aren’t supposed to be there, but there they are,’ said Schweitzer, lead author of the paper. ‘I was pretty shocked.’” (Evelyn Boswell, “Montana T. Rex Yields Next Big Discovery in Dinosaur Paleontology,” Montana State University News Service, 24 March 2005, p. 1). Schweitzer made these discoveries while completing her doctor’s degree under John “Jack” R. Horner, one of the world’s leading dinosaur researchers. Horner is the Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, and was a technical advisor for the film Jurassic Park. When Schweitzer reported her discovery to Horner, he replied, “Mary, the freaking creationists are just going to love you.” Schweitzer replied, “Jack, it’s your dinosaur.” See Jack Horner and James Gorman, How to Build a Dinosaur (New York: Penguin Group, 2009), pp. 80–81.

The discovery of insects in resin that are dated up to 230 million years old look the same as the insects of today. Brown relates some of the research that has been done on them: “In a clean-room laboratory, 30-40 dormant, but living, bacteria species were removed from intestines of bees encased in amber from the Dominican Republic. When cultured, the bacteria grew! This amber is claimed to be 25-40 million years old, but I suspect it formed at the beginning of the flood, only thousands of years ago. Is it more likely that bacteria can be kept alive thousands of years or many millions of years? Metabolism rates, even in dormant bacteria, are not zero.”

Carbon dating is the process of determining how old any organism that was once alive or deposit of carbon is. The amount of Carbon-14, an isotope of carbon, decays over time rapidly with a half-life of only 5,730 years which means that it is impossible for there to be any detectable C-14 left in an organism that is older than 200,000 years. But C-14 has been found in the fossils of organisms, rocks, and petrified wood that are dated millions of years old by evolutionary standards. C-14 has also been found in diamonds dated to the Precambrian era but based on the presence of C-14 in them, they could be no older than 80,000 years. Contamination in diamonds is next to impossible because of the strength of the bonds of carbon in diamonds.

If the universe is billions of years old, why are there still comets around? Each time a comet circles the sun, a portion of it melts away because of the intense heat of the sun vaporizing the ice molecules. Some comets also crash into planets in addition to the sun. After billions of years, comets would have ceased to orbit the sun. Where do comets come from in the first place? Can we really believe that the water on earth came from comets crashing into it? These are just a few of the arguments I would bring up in a debate over the age of the earth. For more information on this topic, I recommend the book Refuting Compromise by Jonathan Sarfati and In the Beginning by Walt Brown.


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