Recently when asked to provide supporting evidence for a young earth, a copy and paste of some AiG claims, none of which actually serve as supporting evidence, was presented. Here is a refutation of claims relevant to the age of the earth. If anyone has anything to add, feel free, as well as refutations of other claims. After all, this is a lot of material for one person to handle at once, especially when it takes a creationist a few seconds to copy and paste and a significant bit of time for one of us to pick it all apart. The source was in the train wreck that is the Creationist-Only forum:
http://www.christianforums.com/t861865
(A) This has nothing to do with "evolutionary theory." As is said repetitively here, the theory of evolution refers to biology, not geology. This has everything to do with plate tectonics theory. This is the common tactic to paint everything as "evolutionary theory" to emotionally charge the issue.
(B) It's a deceptive use of the claim that the oceans have existed on the order of billions of years. While it is true, strictly speaking, because the earth has technically had oceans throughout its history, it is wrong in the sense that the age of the ocean basins is actually roughly 250 million years. The ocean basins as they exist now are relatively young themselves, not billions of years old. Subduction removes older oceanic lithosphere and new lithosphere is created at spreading ridges. So this is a case of deliberate deception on the part of AiG.
Furthermore, one wonders whether the author actually read the paper referenced. More than half of the total sediments on the seafloor are pelagic, meaning they are precipitated from solution and that's what we find on the ocean floor. Less than half are terrigenous, meaning they are eroded from the continents but are not relevant to what we find on the ocean floor. The thickness of terrigenous sediments accumulates at a rate of a fraction of a millimeter per year and they accumulate on the shelf-slope environment. The thickeness, origin and composition of sediments near spreading ridges where the crust is youngest is different from that near the continents. The paper reports that the total mass of sediments is 262 * 10^21 g and 1 * 10^21 g is subducted per million years. This is consistent with a 250 million year old figure, which must also include variable erosion rates, as terrigenous sediments accumulate almost entirely on the continental shelves whereas the majority of ocean floor sediments are pelagic. Sediments are thin on the ocean floor because the vast majority are not terrigenous and it is where the ocean is the youngest and virtually brand new.
And remember common rock salt is made up of halite: NaCl. There's some of that sodium from the oceans right there and there are many such deposits around the world. This is a significant method by which sodium leaves the oceans.
http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/~jean/GEOL3005/PlateTectonics/Magnetic.html
Varves are not produced by catastrophic processes. That is a fact. The examples most often cited involve layered volcanic ash like at Mt. St. Helens or the effect of hurricanes on beaches. Creationists are forced to ignore even the most superficial observations of varves including color, texture, and composition. The examples creationists site are merely sand, silt, and ash mixed together in thin laminae. This is NOT equivalent to varve formations which are alternating light and dark bands of freshwater carbonates and terrigenous sediments alternating with dark kerogen produced by dead algae. One layer is formed in a warmer climate conducive to precipitation of freshwater minerals and imput of terrigenous sediments by rain (etc.) and the other is formed in a colder climate that effectively kills the algae (or relevant organism) and it sinks to the bottom of the lake. This reflects the annual warm/cold climate change and illustrates why varves appear as they do. In fact, we observe them occuring in lakes today.
And the final fatal flaw is that since one layer may have been formed by water (although it didn't given what I just wrote) that all layers must have formed the same way even though they are completely different. It's a ridiculous extrapolation of one local feature onto the entire sedimentary rock record. Fortunately REAL scientists do not provide such superficial analyses.
http://www.christianforums.com/t861865
The key error in this argument is that it is based upon a blatant falsehood presented on the AiG site that reads: "Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged 3 billion years."
(A) This has nothing to do with "evolutionary theory." As is said repetitively here, the theory of evolution refers to biology, not geology. This has everything to do with plate tectonics theory. This is the common tactic to paint everything as "evolutionary theory" to emotionally charge the issue.
(B) It's a deceptive use of the claim that the oceans have existed on the order of billions of years. While it is true, strictly speaking, because the earth has technically had oceans throughout its history, it is wrong in the sense that the age of the ocean basins is actually roughly 250 million years. The ocean basins as they exist now are relatively young themselves, not billions of years old. Subduction removes older oceanic lithosphere and new lithosphere is created at spreading ridges. So this is a case of deliberate deception on the part of AiG.
Furthermore, one wonders whether the author actually read the paper referenced. More than half of the total sediments on the seafloor are pelagic, meaning they are precipitated from solution and that's what we find on the ocean floor. Less than half are terrigenous, meaning they are eroded from the continents but are not relevant to what we find on the ocean floor. The thickness of terrigenous sediments accumulates at a rate of a fraction of a millimeter per year and they accumulate on the shelf-slope environment. The thickeness, origin and composition of sediments near spreading ridges where the crust is youngest is different from that near the continents. The paper reports that the total mass of sediments is 262 * 10^21 g and 1 * 10^21 g is subducted per million years. This is consistent with a 250 million year old figure, which must also include variable erosion rates, as terrigenous sediments accumulate almost entirely on the continental shelves whereas the majority of ocean floor sediments are pelagic. Sediments are thin on the ocean floor because the vast majority are not terrigenous and it is where the ocean is the youngest and virtually brand new.
Strangely enough this argument does not support a 6000 year old earth, so why it is used is a mystery to me. It fails to consider the removal of salt by the oceans in the earth's past by biological processes by organisms that incorporate sodium into themselves and on land as evidenced by features like extensive halite deposits in the sedimentary rock record like those that sparked salt mining in Detroit. These deposits are up to ~1600 feet thick in this case. The diagram below illustrates how shallow bodies of water that have an influx of salt water and a relatively high evaporation rate cause these salt deposits to form.
And remember common rock salt is made up of halite: NaCl. There's some of that sodium from the oceans right there and there are many such deposits around the world. This is a significant method by which sodium leaves the oceans.
The AiG tries to explain away the data with a lie: "A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then. This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data." In other words, changes in the magnitude of the earth's magnetic field occur when they want them to, and they have constructed a diagram to that effect that is not based upon any data whatsoever. It just contains convenient placings of magnetic reversals at the time of a flood they cannot substantiate and a peak at 2000 years ago. However this ignores the fact that the non-dipole magnetic field is increasing and that the magnitude of the dipole field decreases prior to magnetic reversals that have an average periodicity of 250 thousand years. Also out of consideration is the fact that the behavior of the magnetic field now does not indicate constancy in the past considering the magnetic field has fluctuated throughout time. So why do I call it a lie? Because they claim that our present data set and paleomagnetic data actually substantiate their position when it obviously does not. Paleomagnetism has shown how the seafloor records magnetic field reversals and they are dated. We see them occuring millions of years in the past. Some nice pictures of this can be found here:
http://wwwrses.anu.edu.au/~jean/GEOL3005/PlateTectonics/Magnetic.html
This is based upon wishful thinking rather than experimentation: "the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred." Unconsolidated sediment when pushed will not form folds with clearly defined layers. Rocks are crystalline solids, and crystalline solids can deform by the gradual accumulation of nonrecoverable strain. An analogy would be like a glacier, which itself is a crystalline solid, and has internal folding as well. When strain is accumulated gradually, rocks behave in a ductile manner almost like plastic. Crystal defects of all sorts provide a way for the crystals in rocks to slide against each other as a response to the accumulation of strain. The wavelengths of folds are a function of the thickness of the layers therein such that layers that are relatively thin will be more tightly folded compared with those that are relatively thick.
This is a deliberately vague claim as they mention "strong geologic evidence" but do not cite what specifically that evidence is and they attribute it to a dishonest creationist, in effect, simply saying 'just trust us.' If their only source of such "strong geologic evidence" is a creationist whose work has been previously demonstrated to be dishonest, it can be discarded. This probably refers to clastic dikes which are believed to have formed in the cambrian, rather than hundreds of millions of years later, and the dikes themselves reflect this as there is evidence of deformation and cracking after the injection of sediment during the orogenic episode creating the Rocky Mountains. It's simply dishonest to state that geologists think that the formation in question was still unconsolidated for hundreds of millions of years.
Since the polonium nuclides present are all produced by the U-238 decay chain which involves nuclides with much longer half lives than creationists claim the earth has been around, this isn't a problem at all. The alternate explanation that decay rates varied is unsubstantiated and simply wild thinking and ignores the problems with that scenario: (1) there are no terrestrial processes that can wildly vary decay rates, (2) the variation of decay rates would create an inordinate amount of heat released that would destroy all life on earth considering most of the heat on earth is produced by radioactivity, and (3) the fact that the dating methods work with great accuracy when cross referenced must be ignored because they involve parent nuclides with different half-lives, so they would have to all be altered very specifically by very different amounts. In other words, a great number of wild coincidences must occur that are all unsubstantiated. It's also another case of creationists being required to ignore data like our ability to predict radiometric dates based upon other known geologic processes and our ability to cross reference geologic dates (both of which have been previously discussed on this forum).
This is a typical oversimplification that ignores variations in climate that can cause varying rates of He escape from the atmosphere as well as other methods involving solar winds and factors involving the earth's magnetic field. Helium is one of the lightest elements after all and thus as a gas has a high velocity due to its light mass. With increases in temperature it can easily escapt the atmosphere and does so at a rate virtually equal to its production. This is a long refuted PRATT based upon an oversimplification.
The inevitable conclusion of this argument requires the assumption that humans were on earth since the beginning of its history as per their literal interpretation of the BIble. This is just wild speculation on their part, but in reality, has nothing to do with the age of the earth.
Again, this is irrelevant to the age of the earth. The argument does ignore a significant event, which is the most recent ice age. The environment is also a factor when it comes to agriculture. Agriculture did not begin until just after the end of the most recent ice age when the environment was much more amenable to the rise of sedentary civilizations that can depend on a fertile environment for their resources.
This is the weakest argument of all, and based entirely on wishful thinking and vague speculation. It has nothing to do with evidence at all. But more importantly, it has nothing to do with the age of the earth.
Curiously enough, the user who posted this tried this a while ago and it was addressed. I guess he ignored it, as per creationist habit. This is a typical case of creationists ignoring data. It's merely dishonesty, and the ignorant buy it because they want to, but they don't realize that it forces them to ignore data and make a wild analogy that is incredibly laughable.
Varves are not produced by catastrophic processes. That is a fact. The examples most often cited involve layered volcanic ash like at Mt. St. Helens or the effect of hurricanes on beaches. Creationists are forced to ignore even the most superficial observations of varves including color, texture, and composition. The examples creationists site are merely sand, silt, and ash mixed together in thin laminae. This is NOT equivalent to varve formations which are alternating light and dark bands of freshwater carbonates and terrigenous sediments alternating with dark kerogen produced by dead algae. One layer is formed in a warmer climate conducive to precipitation of freshwater minerals and imput of terrigenous sediments by rain (etc.) and the other is formed in a colder climate that effectively kills the algae (or relevant organism) and it sinks to the bottom of the lake. This reflects the annual warm/cold climate change and illustrates why varves appear as they do. In fact, we observe them occuring in lakes today.
This is dishonest as well considering the cross bedding produced in relevant formations like the Coconino Sandstone are of a larger scale than the cross bedding produced by water. However the smaller dunes form in shallow water environments, not deep water environments. But the larger scale is one nail in the coffin. Not all cross bedding is equal and that is the fatal mistake of this argument. It also requires that one completely ignores all paleontological evidence associated in such layers that indicate that they formed in a desert sand dune environment including tracks made by desert lizards and scorpions. Why would they be walking around in the middle of "deep flowing water?" They obviously wouldn't and it just shows how willing creationists are to ignore evidence they don't like.
And the final fatal flaw is that since one layer may have been formed by water (although it didn't given what I just wrote) that all layers must have formed the same way even though they are completely different. It's a ridiculous extrapolation of one local feature onto the entire sedimentary rock record. Fortunately REAL scientists do not provide such superficial analyses.
