Chapter Fourteen from Antidisestablishmentarianism: What Does the Scientific Evidence Prove?

 

 ”I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.”
Charles Darwin¹

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
 John Adams²

“In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore … in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long … seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long. … There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Mark Twain³

Christians often believe that science is an enemy. Samuel Johnson said, “Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”⁴ Christians to believe this way because most who use the word “science” have completely abandoned Johnson’s demand that integrity go hand in hand with knowledge, replacing truth with selective evidence which supports preconceived conclusions. Christians should neither develop an antagonism toward true science, nor should they ignore the very real contributions of true science. Neither should true scientists ignore the very real foundation of science in Christianity. Dennis Prager, anthropologist and historian, laments the unthinking reliance on pseudo-science in today’s society.

“In much of the West, the well-educated have been taught to believe they can know nothing and they can draw no independent conclusions about truth, unless they cite a study and ‘experts’ have affirmed it. ‘Studies show’ is to the modern secular college graduate what ‘Scripture says’ is to the religious fundamentalist.”⁵

In everyday life, probably the greatest area of conflict between Christianity and those who misuse the word science is moral relativism. This came about because of the dishonest use of the word relativity. The theories of relativity (special and general) neither support nor have any reference to moral relativism. The similarity in the sound of the words is simply a propaganda technique. Neither do the moral absolutes of the Word of God belittle true science. However, since the established religion of Secular Humanism teaches just the opposite, the following list of scientific facts can help us understand that true science can only be explained by the world as described in the Bible. None of these scientific facts prove the Bible. Each does prove the religious belief in Deep Time to be a scientific impossibility.

Sun Energy Source

Until shortly after WWII, the majority of scientists believed the sun shrank by an average of .01 percent per year. They concluded, based on 400 years’ worth of scientific observations, that this was proof that the sun was powered by gravitational collapse. In the late 1800s the Kelvin-Helmholtz Contraction Theory was developed to explain both the observed contraction and how the sun was powered.⁶

In the 1930s religious Secular Humanists, understanding the consequences of this theory, proposed nuclear fusion as the energy source for the sun. In 1928 George Gamow published a paper proposing a theory which came to be known as the Gamow factor.⁷ This was the first serious step toward the idea that stars are powered by nuclear fusion. General acceptance was slow. Gamow’s ideas were futher explored in the 1930s. This exploration grew into Hans Bethe’s theory of Stellar Nucleosynthesis.⁸ Bethe won a Nobel Prize for this work in 1967. The detonation of the atomic bombs actually did more to convince people than the theoretical papers. According to the Kelvin-Helmoltz Contraction Theory, with gravitational collapse powering the sun, the sun would have been so large and hot around 50,000 years ago that it would have boiled all the water out of all the oceans on the earth. A mere million years ago the orbit of the earth would have been inside the sun.

Secularists’ religious belief that life on earth has existed for billions of years required the sun to be billions of years old. So they eagerly accepted that the sun was powered by nuclear fusion. It is also pointed out that the sun’s surface is not static, as is the case with water, rock or ice on a planet’s surface, so a consistent measurement of the sun’s diameter is not possible. Two different measurements on the same day might yield different diameters because of massive fluctuations on the sun.

The sun’s life cycle in this theory would be 9.2 billion years. At 4.6 billion years the sun would be roughly half way through its life cycle. The problem with this theory is that the sun would have been too cool; forty percent of its present brightness, 4.6 billion years ago, and the earth would have been a frozen wasteland.

Project SOHO, launched in 1995, has provided us with more information about the sun. Unwilling to change their belief about the age of the sun and life on earth, some Secular Humanists now believe that the sun is powered by a perfect balance of different types of nuclear fusion combined with gravitational collapse, which has produced a uniform temperature for life on earth for the last 4.6 billion years. The best way to describe this kind of balance is “miraculous.”⁸

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite, or SDO, was launched in February 2010 and chief scientist Dean Pesnell said it has already reshaped our theories of how the star works.⁹

ScienceBlogs.com contributor Ethan Siegal, PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida, writes a blog called “Starts with a Bang.” In a post titled “How the Sun works, from the inside out”, originally written August 12, 2011 he has included crossed out and updated information, indicating how rapidly information changes and theories about the sun must be changed, updated, and corrected to match the most up-to-date theories.¹⁰

Many who insist on billions of years agree that 4.6 billion years is just a rough estimate. They explain that the 9.2 billion year figure is correct, but that they simply are not certain how far our sun is into its 9.2 billion year lifecycle. With such rapid changes in information, how is it possible to state dogmatically that the sun has a lifespan of 9.2 billion years?

Radiohalos and Radiometric Dating.

The 4.6 billion year figure comes from Radiometric dating. The most common radiohalos are found in zircons. Zircons are found all over the earth and range in size from microscopic to the size of rocks. Zircons can be of gemstone quality and large zircons are often used as substitutes for diamonds (cubic zirconium). Most zircons, however, are around the size of small grains of sand. Though the wide range of impurities creates an enormous variety of zircons, the most important geological use for zircons is radiometric dating. Zircons contain trace amounts of uranium and thorium. Tiny zircons are sliced open to examine fission tracks produced by decaying uranium. These fission tracks and the U->Pb (Uranium to lead) methods of radiometric dating have dated zircons as old as 4.404 billion years.¹¹ This means, according to uniformitarian assumptions, that the original crystal formation of these tested zircon samples occurred 4.404 billion years ago. As with all radiometric samples, there is no scientific way of knowing the original condition of the sample tested.

The same zircons also contain helium, which provides another dating method. Helium retention rates in these zircons have a date range beginning as young as 4,000 years.¹¹ While there are a tremendous number of articles attacking this date as too young, most of these articles read like tabloids reporting on British royalty, not honest science. A true scientist would look for an explanation that accounted for both the uranium radiohalos and helium retention. It is far easier to come up with an explanation for the radiohalos’ presence if the rocks have a young age. It is nearly impossible to explain the retained helium if the rocks are ancient. One possible explanation for young radiohalos is that they were created at the same time the earth was created.

Another possible answer is that a massive thermonuclear event such as the sun exploding and losing an outer layer sent thermonuclear radiation through the entire planet. Since such an event would have destroyed all non-aquatic life on earth, this would have happened around 2500 BC, at the time of the flood.

Dating Rock Formations

Travel anywhere and you will see signs proclaiming various rocks or layers of rocks to be millions or even billions of years old. “The Little Willow Formation consists primarily of contorted quartz schist and gneiss; at 1.7 billion years old, it is the oldest rock in the Salt Lake City area.”¹² This religious belief in the myth of great ages is proclaimed in textbooks, school classrooms, museums, and, most importantly, by employers, who will either refuse to hire or actually fire anyone who refuses to openly support this religious myth. Though many supposed scientific facts are used to support these dates, radiometric dating is the foundation for all dating methods. ¹³

How is the age of a particular fossil determined? It is compared to other fossils of a “known” age or it is dated according to strata where it was found. How is the age of the other fossils or the strata determined? The usual answer is more fossils of a “known” age or strata of a “known” age. This circular reasoning is standard textbook content. Radiometric dating is the only dating method that does not rely on a comparison with something else already dated.

Every form of radiometric dating always depends on an unstable radioactive isotope deteriorating (decaying) to a stable isotope at a known, stable rate. K->Ar (Potassium to Argon) and U->Pb (Uranium235 to Lead) are just two examples of isotopes used as radiometric clocks. All radioactive isotopes used as radiometric clocks work the same way. A sample is taken and analyzed. The result is always a ratio of radioactive isotope to the stable final element. The ratio can be found on a chart because the rate of decay is stable, that is, unaffected by any known outside influence. In fact the only process known to man to affect this rate of decay is a thermonuclear reaction.

Everyone who uses radioactive isotopes as clocks must, however, rely on two invalid religious assumptions. The first is the unscientific religious leap of faith that the sample has never undergone any thermonuclear changes. Though it is impossible to prove a negative, there is no scientific evidence that the earth has never undergone any thermonuclear event. And there is some evidence that the earth might have undergone a thermonuclear event. It is possible that the very evidence used to “prove” the great age of the earth, worldwide radiohalos, is actually evidence of a recent catastrophe which wiped out all life on earth.

This second invalid religious assumption is so serious that it completely invalidates the use of radioactive isotopes as a clock. For radiometric clocks to work, it is an absolutely essential scientific necessity to know the original condition of the sample. If the original condition of the sample is less than one hundred percent radioactive, then the date is less than the published date. These widely publicized dates, however, assume that the tested sample began its existence one hundred per cent radioactive with no daughter element present. In reality, the only scientific information we learn from these radiometric tests is the current ratio of radioactive material to nonradioactive material.

If there was a sample with a known date, other samples could be calibrated against it. Not only do such calibration samples not exist, without a time machine to go back in time and obtain a calibration sample, it is not possible to have a calibration sample. With very few exceptions, the published dates of tens of thousands to billions of years are based purely on mythological religious assumptions.

There are a few exceptions, however. Thermo luminescence is used to date pottery. Thermo luminescence is based on the time the pottery was fired, a known event. C14 is another one of these exceptions. The radioactive isotope Carbon14 is integrated into the tissue of living organisms throughout the lifetime of that organism. At the time of death that amount of C14 becomes a fixed amount and begins to radioactively decay into Carbon12. Though the ratio of C14 to C12 should be an almost perfect radiometric clock, certain conditions can alter that ratio. If the ratio is in some way tampered with, that tampering is normally the leaching of some of the radiation. That particular sample will then test to be older than it really is. C14 dates older than 1000 BC also assume absorption rates of C12 similar to current absorption rates. That is almost certainly an invalid assumption, making many, if not all C14 dates for items dated older than 1000 BC older than they actually are.

Finally, radiometric dating never gives an absolute date. It only tells us the upper limit of a range of possible dates. One of the most important but rarely published conclusions by secularists about C14 dating is that even they admit that after approximately 60,000 years, the remaining C14 is such a small amount that it is difficult to test for it. They have also concluded that C14 disappears entirely after a little more than 100, 000 years. Though fossils which are pronounced older than 100, 000 years are rarely tested for C14, those few which have been tested have always still had some trace of C14.

Lunar Recession

“Scotty, I need power now!” pleads a desperate Captain Kirk, only to hear his Chief Engineer reply, “He’s turned the engines off. Completely cold. Thirty minutes to startup. I canna change the laws of physics, Captain!” On Star Trek, the original series, this is a common scenario. The only hope of pulling out of a decaying orbit and saving the Enterprise is a restart of her engines.

Why does the Enterprise need power? The Earth is surrounded by satellites. They are not powered. The Enterprise needs to maintain a slow orbit as near the planet as possible and at a fixed point over it. The only way to accomplish that is to keep the engines powered up to constantly change the orbit. The closer a satellite is to the object it is orbiting, the faster it has to travel to maintain a stable orbit without engine power. Mercury is the fastest-traveling planet orbiting the sun.Venus, Earth and Mars are all progressively slower at their greater distances.

The Enterprise would have been sucked in by the planet’s gravity if it couldn’t get additional power to maintain its close, fixed position orbit. For a given speed there is only one stable orbit around a planet (or sun). The closer the satellite (or starship) is to the object it is orbiting, the faster it needs to be without power, or the more power it needs to maintain the orbit. All orbiting objects have a decaying orbit (being pulled into the planet), a stable orbit (no change in orbit over time) or a receding orbit (moving away from the planet).

The Laser Reflector left by Apollo 11 on the Lunar surface has been hit with lasers from earth many times. It proves the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year.¹⁴ If the Moon has orbited the Earth at a constant rate without changing speed, sometime in the past it would have possessed a stable orbit closer to the Earth.

At the Moon’s current velocity and trajectory (orbit), only a little closer to the Earth, inside its stable orbit, the Moon would be sucked in just like the Enterprise. Scientifically this means one of two things. Either the Moon is a very recent addition to the Earth or some sort of catastrophe has relatively recently altered the Moon’s orbit. This catastrophe would have required more energy than what could be produced by detonating all the nuclear weapons on Earth at the same time.

That event would have been so great as to be catastrophic. That catastrophe was quite recent, according to a Uniformitarian point of view. Any catastrophe powerful enough to alter the moon’s orbit would also have catastrophically affected the Earth as well.

Though it is possible to calculate when the Moon’s orbit would have been stable, assuming no other changes, any date for a stable orbit is only the oldest possible date. Research for this project yielded too many different dates to make it sensible to include any one. Earth’s tides have a varying effect on the Moon’s stablity. Earth’s geomagnetic field also has an effect that is not consistent. So have impacts on the Moon and even possible changes in the Sun’s gravitational influence. It is impossible to pinpoint when catastrophes might have occurred. The time of the Moon’s stable orbit without any outside influences is the oldest of the possible dates. This catastrophe, or more likely these catastrophes, could have been, and very likely were, far more recent.

Geomagnetic Field Reversal

One force that might have catastrophically altered the Earth is a reversal in the Earth’s magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field has a half-life of 1,400 years. Just 14,000 years ago the Earth’s magnetic field would have been ten times stronger than it is now. 1.4 million years ago the earth’s magnetic field would have been 1,000 times stronger than it is now. That would make animal life impossible.¹⁵

There are many articles which report to “debunk” these observations. They usually begin with personal attacks on the original authors. Even if the “debunkers” are correct that the half-life of the Earth’s magnetic field is longer than 1,400 years, for life to exist hundreds of millions years ago, the half-life must be hundreds of times larger. Rather than personal attacks, data supporting a much longer half-life should be presented. Instead, they assume the earth to be millions of years old, then use data they have proclaimed to already be millions of years old to prove that the earth’s magnetic field has a large half-life.

“Lava flows in Nevada’s Sheep Creek Range may have preserved evidence that the planet’s magnetic field rapidly changed direction.” Other evidence in the paleomagnetic lava flow at Steens Mountain in Oregon shows that the earth’s magnetic field reversed its polarity in just over two weeks.This is in line with a magnetic field half-life of 1,400 years, but entirely unexplainable with a magnetic field hundreds of millions or billions of years old. Also, the sun reverses the polarity of its magnetic field every eleven years. ¹⁶

Mount Saint Helens Canyon Formation

Though the eruption of this volcano was observed by millions via television, internet and print media, few are aware of the significance. It carved another “Little Grand Canyon” similar to the Grand Canyon in Arizona in days or perhaps only hours. Millions witnessed this event. We saw it happening live or on video in real time. To those who understand, the evidence is so overwhelming that even some evolutionists are admitting it, though quite grudgingly. They still believe, without any evidence, that the catastrophe creating most other prominent geologic sites happened millions of years ago. But the evidence has forced them to admit that the Grand Canyon’s formation was rapid, created with massive amounts of water.¹⁷

Varves

Mount Saint Helens produced more scientifically observable evidence, in the form of something remarkably like varves. According to most dictionaries, a varve is a layer of mud at the bottom of a pond or lake. Counting varves used to be considered a very important method of dating. Each layer has two parts, one lighter and the other darker. One part is the time of year when water moves quickly and brings many deposits. The other part is the time of year when water is stationary, perhaps even stagnant, such as the winter when the lake is covered in ice. All honest scientists admit that there might be more than one varve per year. A core sample, which counts varves to determine the age of a lake, might give a date older than the actual date. The assumption that conditions in the past were similar to the present is an assumption that the difference in dates is slight. Though the varve count might be slightly older than the actual date, it is still assumed to be reliable.

The eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980 scientifically proved that assumption to be in error. Ash and mud up to twenty-five feet thick with thousands of layers filled the region. Though these layers are never called varves, they display the same characteristics as varves, a thin light and dark layer sandwiched together. These thousands of layers, put down in a matter of hours, perhaps minutes, completely discredit the concept of using layers for dating, though this is never mentioned.¹⁸

 

Lake Titicaca

Catastrophes change the shape of the land where they occur forever. Few places have been changed more dramatically than Lake Titicaca. It rises 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) above sea level in South America between Bolivia and Peru. Fresh water rivers and streams feed the lake now, but the salt content is about five-and-a-half parts per thousand, classifying the lake as brackish. No current conditions explain the salt content of the lake. The most likely explanation is that Lake Titicaca was once at or below sea level and that a catastrophic uplift moved a lake full of seawater almost two and a half miles above sea level. Marine fossils are preserved around the lake. The current salt level of Lake Titicaca is about fifteen percent of the Pacific Ocean off Peru, where the Pacific Ocean varies from 34 to 37 parts per thousand.

“In the heart of the Andes … is Lake Titicaca.” [Its saltiness and the present fauna (It contains sea horses)] strongly suggested that the present fauna of Lake Titicaca has survived from a time when the lake communicated directly with [was connected to] the ocean.”¹⁹

Theories other than an uplift have been postulated. These theories, however, require completely speculative processes that have never been observed. That is not a scientific process. Some evolutionists believe the uplift theory because the scientific evidence is so overwhelming, but say that the catastrophe occurred millions of years ago. A past waterline is slanted in relation to the current waterline. At one time Lake Titicaca had more water than it does now, and this waterline is much higher at one end of the lake, proving that a catastrophe tipped the lake in the past.

“The strandline [near Lake Titicaca] was carefully surveyed for a length of about 375 miles [603 km]. And then it was established that it is not ‘straight.’ … Its level showed a slant of a most peculiar character in relation to the present ocean-level, or, which amounts to the same, relative to the present level of Lake Titicaca.” ¹⁹

Past irrigation and buildings in and around the lake prove an ancient civilization built the port city of Tiahuanaco. It is approximately 800 feet higher than the current lake surface. Tiahuanaco was a harbor, but is now twelve miles south of the lake, and the ship berths are of a size most likely built for ocean-going vessels. The lake “is large, 3,261 square miles. It contains sea horses, suggesting that this region or its water were once below sea level. On the mountain sides … are terraces of ancient corn fields going up to 17,000 feet. Yet corn will not germinate[sprout] above 11,500 feet!”²⁰ There is also a building beneath the lake, about 660 feet long, with a road running to it and roads and steps leading down into deeper water. It is twice the size of a modern soccer field and modern archeologists believe it to be a temple.²¹

Himalayan Yellow Band Ammonites

Geological features suddenly and catastrophically created by water can be found all over the world. Near the top of the Himalayan Mountains, reaching up to 29,029 feet (8,848 m) above sea level, is a layer of rock known as the yellow band. This yellow band is filled with marine fossils called ammonites. “Marine fossils are also found high in the Himalayas, the world’s tallest mountain range, reaching up to 29,029 feet (8,848 m) above sea level. For example, fossil ammonites (coiled marine cephalopods) are found in limestone beds in the Himalayas of Nepal. All geologists agree that ocean waters must have buried these marine fossils in these limestone beds. “²² Ammonites are common fossils found all over the earth and are similar to a modern marine creature known as the Nautilus. These fossilized marine creatures lived in oceans, not a freshwater lake. All of the Himalayan mountain chain had to have been under seawater. This many fossilized ammonites were not transported somehow after the mountains were formed. Sometime in the past the entire Himalayan Mountain chain was either five miles lower than it is now or the entire planet had thousands of times more water.

Also, these ammonite fossils are not crushed. They were moved by a catastrophic (sudden) event while the entire layer was plastic (mud). The ammonites had to be protected to keep them from being crushed. The only scientific answer is that the surrounding mud protected them. A slow uplift over a long period of time would have dried out the surrounding mud. Instead of protecting the ammonites, the hardened rock would have ground the ammonites to powder. Since water weighs approximately eight pounds per gallon, the energy necessary to create the Himalayan Mountains was thousands of times greater than all the nuclear weapons in all the nuclear arsenals in every country on earth detonating at the same time.

On a much smaller scale, highway engineers have carved into mountains all over the earth. Thousands of mountains at every possible elevation all over the earth show bent, folded and twisted layers intact without cracks. These layers had to be plastic [mud] when they were put in place. This is the only way these mountains could have formed.

Catastrophic Fossil Formation

Fossils like the ammonites of the yellow band were formed in a catastrophic event. Even evolutionists have to admit that. Insects, microbes and weathering combine to destroy everything except bones in less than one hundred years, often in less than a week. Tissue deteriorates too rapidly for fossilization without a catastrophe. The question is: When did this catastrophe occur? Once again, the only available scientific evidence indicates a more recent event. Since fossils were bones, they once contained C14. If a standard test for C14 discovered any C14, the tested sample would scientifically prove a date less than 60,000 years old.

Since the religion of Secular Humanism demands that these fossils are millions of years old, and they control both the fossils to be tested and the testing procedures, C14 testing is never done on fossils. There is only the dogmatic assertion that fossils are now stone and there is no carbon to test.

There have been carbon tests on mollusks that indicate a much younger date on certain samples. Without C14 testing, however, there is no scientific dating of fossils, only religious pronouncements.²³

Warm Antarctica

There is abundant evidence that Antarctica was once warm. Warm climate animal and plant fossils abound. Antarctica also has a coal bed. Formation of a coal bed requires a massive number of warm climate plants. The ice core samples have discovered that many of these fossils are below sea level.²⁴ The question is, why? Possible explanations include that Antarctica was once in a warmer latitude and moved, or that the magnetic poles have shifted (as mentioned earlier), or that the oceans have changed dramatically. The facts are clear. A once warm-climate land mass now lies beneath ice three miles thick in spots. The common thread through all of these explanations is the scientific fact of a catastrophic change. Sadly, instead of completely scientific explanations, supposed scientific and academic articles lead off with dogmatic mythological assertions: “around 40 million years ago,” “millions of years ago,” “40,000 year cycles.”

A catastrophe could turn Antarctica from a warm climate into a frozen wasteland very quickly. The articles describing Antarctica’s past might have much correct scientific data, but these dogmatic mythological foundational assertions make the entire article read like something from a tabloid.

Ice Core Samples and Glacier Girl

Researchers annually take core samples of glaciers and massive ice caps such as those covering Antarctica. They count each layer as a single year and publish a date. As with radiometric dating, it is not possible to know the original condition of the ice cap or glacier. However, unlike radiometric dating, starting with a zero condition (no ice, bare ground) is reasonable. Assuming that the earth is older than the glacier or ice cap is also reasonable. So the speed with which a glacier or ice cap forms is critical to an accurate date.

A squadron of P-38s made an emergency landing on a glacier in Greenland on July 15, 1942. The pilots were rescued and the planes abandoned. On July 15, 1992, the final piece of one P-38 was dug out of the glacier. For 50 years the squadron of planes had flowed with the glacier while being covered with more ice. One plane was pulled out of the glacier more than two miles from the landing point, buried in 268 feet of ice. The recovered plane was restored and renamed Glacier Girl.²⁵

If the same techniques which boldly pronounce with absolute certainty that core samples are tens of thousands of years old were applied to the ice which covered Glacier Girl, then that ice would have to be thousands of years old. Yet the scientific fact is that Glacier Girl was covered by 268 feet of ice. It is also a scientific fact that this ice was fifty years old. This particular glacier grew at a rate of almost 5.5 feet per year. At this rate, the thickest ice sheet in the world, Terre Adelie in Antarctica, could be formed in just over 2,500 years. Secular Humanists would insist that different conditions in the past required a much longer formation time. Any change in the conditions could just as easily have resulted in a shorter time for formation.

Besides counting the layers in core samples, methods of dating a glacier include testing the oxygen content of the water, studying the presence of CO2, finding evidence of radioactive decay, and examining pieces of volcanic material. Fred Hall wrote a brief article, “Ice Cores Not All That Simple,”²⁶ showing how complicated glaciers really are. None of these methods are entirely reliable. While there have been hundreds, perhaps thousands, of computer and theoretical models developed to explain glacier formation, the only scientific observations are in line with the glacier which covered Glacier Girl.

Water Scale

Formations like the Grand Canyon were carved by water action. No one disputes this, but water action is a topic on which scientists can still find points of disagreement.

Anyone who has watched a movie from the 1950s or earlier has seen the common, at that time, technique of filming a scale model ship in a tank of water. Even with rather large ships, such as the ones used in Ben Hur, the water never looks quite real. The explanation is that water does not scale, that is, large amounts of water look and behave differently than smaller amounts of water. For realistic water, producers and directors had to either build full sized models or wait decades for 3-D animation.

Since water does not scale visually, scale models using water were believed to be inaccurate also. For example, water can cut channels through layers of mud. The resulting canyons look something like a scale model of the Grand Canyon. These models have been dismissed as unrealistic simply because water does not scale. This idea that water does not scale, however, is not always true. Bridges built in powerful rivers, especially rivers prone to flooding, are often washed away. Engineers building a new bridge over the Mississippi River at Alton, IL, between 1990 and 1994, built a scale model to help prevent that from happening. The scale model they built used real water to examine the direction and amount of force the Mississippi River would exert on the new bridge.²⁷

Though the water did not “look” to scale, the water flow and pressure information was accurate enough to allow the engineers to see what forces they had to contend with. Because of the model, modifications were made in the bridge’s design. These modifications are likely the reason the bridge is still standing today.

Water Salinity

The study of water and its properties gives scientists many ways to learn about the earth. It is also a very much-abused study when it comes to dating the earth. One of the most unusual methods of dating is measuring the salt content of the sea. This method assumes a constant and steady addition of salt to the sea by freshwater rivers and a constant and steady evaporation rate.²⁸

While this method is often cited in textbooks as one of many dating methods “proving” an ancient Earth, it is fraught with so many difficulties that it has few educated defenders. It is usually referred to as an “additional” or “support” method of dating.

The first major scientific problem with using the salt content of the sea as a dating method is the wide disparity in salt content among the world’s bodies of water. The Mediterranean Sea has a much higher salt content than the Atlantic, which has a higher salt content than the Antarctic. Is the Mediterranean older than the rest of the oceans of the world? Are the rivers that flow into the Mediterranean saltier than the rest of the rivers of the world? The scientific answer to both of these questions is either “no” or “we do not know”.

The next problem is that people have attempted to measure the salt content of the seas for thousands of years. Older documents are not always reliable. But what evidence do we have that the seas are increasing in salinity? Though Secular Humanists claim that this is because the accumulation of salt is extremely slow, there simply is no scientific evidence to back up this claim. The biggest problem is simply a lack of evidence. There is no scientific evidence that the seas anywhere are increasing in salinity.

Providence Canyon

Water’s power to shape the landscape provided us with another amazing creation in southwest Georgia. Providence Canyon, sometimes called “Georgia’s Little Grand Canyon” is 1100 acres of canyons carved out by erosion since the early 1800s.²⁹ Though much smaller than the Grand Canyon, it is still one of the largest canyons in America. As the model of the Alton, Illinois bridge helped engineers understand the Mississippi River; Providence Canyon helps us understand the Grand Canyon in Arizona. While neither the Alton Bridge nor the Providence Canyon are perfect models, on a small scale they both accurately model the effects of far greater amounts of water.

Though Providence Canyon is smaller than the Grand Canyon, it has many similar features. The formation of Providence is a scientific fact. Since Providence Canyon is less than two hundred years old, there is no scientific reason to believe the Grand Canyon, or any other canyon, must be millions of years old. All that is needed to make a canyon larger than Providence Canyon is more water, not more time.

Arches National Park

Just a few hundred miles north of the Grand Canyon is Arches National Park in Southeast Utah. When the National Park Service took over management of the park in 1971 there were over 2000 natural sandstone arches. Since then many arches have collapsed, the most famous being the collapse of Wall Arch on August 4-5, 2008. Though the exact number of collapsed arches is not documented, if only one arch were to collapse every three years, in less than 675 years there would not be any arches left. There is no evidence that there were ever hundreds of thousands or millions of arches. The evidence indicates that there were never many more arches than we see now. And there is evidence that many arches have fallen since 1971.

The scientific conclusion, based on the scientifically observed collapse of arches, is that either conditions in the recent past were drastically different to preserve the arches or that the arches are much younger than Secular Humanism proclaims them to be. If conditions were similar to the conditions we know now, the arches could be not older than about 4,000 years old. They could easily be younger.³⁰

Stalactites and Stalagmites

Stalactites and stalagmites are another geologic feature formed by water. The Lincoln Memorial was built between 1914 and 1922 over land formerly at the bottom of the Potomac River. Stalactites and stalagmites have formed beneath the stairs in the period since the construction was completed (less than 100 years at the time of this writing) as described below.

 ”… Supports were driven down almost 100 feet to bedrock. This cavernous foundation provides an ideal location for cave-like formations to actively grow. Water on the surface slowly makes its way down through cement stairs into the empty space below. Cement is ‘glued’ together by calcium carbonate. As the water passes through the cement, it dissolves some calcium carbonate and carries it downward. When the water reaches the open space, it leaves behind the calcium carbonate, creating stalactites and stalagmites. This is the same way cave stalactites and stalagmites form, only instead of passing through cement stairs, natural cave features usually form when ground water passes through limestone. Since the cave formations at the Lincoln Memorial aren’t in an actual cave, maybe we should call them ‘under-the-stair-ites’.”³¹

Dave E. Matson attempts to debunk the creationist claim that all the stalactites and stalagmites in existence could have formed in less than 5000 years.

“The Bulletin of the National Speleological Society (37: p.21, 1975) gives a stalactite/stalagmite growth rate of … 0.1 to 10 centimeters per thousand years. An exceptional spurt of growth might exceed … 10 centimeters or 2.5 inches per thousand years. …Thus, a 60 foot giant, as might be found in Carlsbad Caverns, would have a minimum estimated age of about 180,000 years.”³²

Timpanogos Cave National Monument, in American Fork, Utah, is described in park literature as being roughly 65 million years old. Although the claim that the stalactites and stalagmites are millions of years old is no longer being made, secularists still demand thousands of years for the formation of these cave features, usually tens or hundreds of thousands, not the less than a hundred necessary in the Lincoln Memorial.

“Water trickling through the limestone overlying the caves dissolved calcite and other minerals from the rock. …The water deposited its mineral load as tiny crystals on a cave ceiling, wall, or floor. Over thousands of years, as countless crystals were deposited, a variety of cave formations took shape–stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, helictites, and others.” ³³

Julia E. Cole, University of Tucson professor of Geosciences, studied a limestone cave in southern AZ. The article described the cave formations as “natural climate archives” and said, “The stalagmite yielded an almost continuous century-by-century climate record spanning 55,000 to 11,000 years ago. … Each climate regime lasted from a few hundred years to more than one thousand years.”³⁴ The article’s photo shows Sarah Truebe, a geosciences doctoral student, with a cave formation less than 2 feet tall. The cave itself appears to be less than ten feet in height. The use of these cave features as “natural climate archives” is based on utter conjecture and uniformitarian presupposition.

Diamonds

Diamonds are reported by Secular Humanists to be no younger than 45 million years old, formed at least 75 miles beneath the earth. Yet synthetic diamonds are produced commercially. In 1953 the first industrial grade synthetic diamonds were produced. These tiny synthetic diamonds were and still are manufactured for industrial applications such as cutting tools and electrical coatings. More advanced processes coat lens with synthetic diamond. The synthetic diamond industry gradually increased the size and quality of synthetic diamonds. In early 2010 a 2-carat synthetic gemstone quality diamond was produced in about three days.

The existence of synthetic diamonds is a scientific fact. They are produced and reproduced under controlled conditions. Depending on color desired, other chemicals can be added to the carbon and the resulting gemstone can be pink, green, blue, yellow and colorless (white). The diamond mining industry is concerned about the number of synthetic diamonds being manufactured. Proclaiming the youngest naturally occurring diamond to be 45 million years old is a dogmatic religious pronouncement contrary to science. The most reasonable scientific theory is that diamonds were formed suddenly under the correct conditions.³⁵

The RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) research project at the Institute for Creation Research found Carbon14 in both natural diamonds and ten US coal beds. The upper range of the possible dates for the diamonds was 55,000 years.

“R.E. Taylor of the Department of Anthropology at the University of California-Riverside and of the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California-Los Angeles teamed with J. Southon at the Keck Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Laboratory of the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California-Irvine to analyze nine natural diamonds from Brazil. All nine diamonds are conventionally regarded as being at least of early Paleozoic age, that is, at least several hundred million years old. So if they really are that old they should not have any intrinsic carbon-14 in them. Eight of the diamonds yielded radiocarbon ‘ages’ of 64,900 years to 80,000 years.”³⁶

Coal and Oil

Diamonds, coal and oil are all carbon-based. Most of the world uses coal and oil to heat homes and run electric generators. Coal and oil are abundant. Coal was made from plant material that was covered with water and neither coal nor oil is being made today. There is, however, one possible exception.

When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, the explosion filled Spirit Lake with logs. The bottom of the lake was filled with plant material covered in mud from the eruption. This was under the lake water. Examination of this material showed the early stages of the formation of coal. This, however, is a very tiny deposit compared to the massive coal deposits worldwide.³⁷

Crude petroleum is also produced on a small scale in laboratories from garbage. Like diamonds and petrified wood, the processes that formed coal beds and oil deposits are not going on today. Something is dramatically different about conditions today. Like diamond formation and petrified wood formation, the only possible scientific example of oil and coal formation shows coal and oil being formed rapidly in a catastrophic event.³⁸

Petrified Wood

Just off of Interstate 40 in the Navajo Indian reservation in northeast Arizona is the Petrified Forest. While the Petrified Forest in Arizona is the most well-known of the Petrified Forests, petrified wood can be found all over the world, though it is abundant in dry regions of the western United States. Petrified wood is wood that has turned to stone. The authors have seen petrified tree stumps in South Dakota more than twenty feet in diameter. Perhaps there is a rare exception somewhere, but wood today is not becoming petrified except synthetically. Though modern wood can be synthetically turned into petrified wood, the process only works under highly-controlled conditions.

The existence of synthetic diamonds and manmade petrified wood both scientifically prove that these substances require not immense periods of time but proper conditions to create. They can be made in days, weeks or months. The religious belief that wood petrified over a great period of time and that the process took place thousands or millions of years ago is without scientific evidence. Even people who insist that wood petrified thousands or millions of years ago must admit wood is not naturally petrifying today. Therefore, something has dramatically changed. Though the most reasonable scientific explanation is a catastrophe, religious dogmas refuse to allow for these scientific explanations.³⁹

Preservation in Ice, Tar, and Peat

There is an entire class of creatures entombed in tar, peat bogs, muck and sand; organic remains clearly younger than fossils. Some of the more well known of these creatures are woolly mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, woolly rhinos and giant ground sloths. These creatures are not fossilized, that is, turned to stone, but frozen. Though some were preserved in warmer areas by tar, the majority of these specimens are frozen and decay quickly when thawed.

Undigested plant remains in their stomachs prove that the animals were frozen quickly. Though Pop Culture places these animals in the Ice Age, the types of undigested plants found in their stomachs suggest that at the time the animals were frozen they and the plants lived in a warm climate. This indicates that tropical or subtropical conditions existed even in Siberia, Alaska and northern Canada. Though these creatures obviously died in a catastrophe, this catastrophe was far more recent than the catastrophe which fossilized billions of other creatures worldwide.⁴⁰

Soft Tissue in Dinosaur Bones

Creatures found in tar and ice are said by evolutionists to have come from a later time period than those fossilized, thus minimizing the troublesome issues of their real age. It is harder to dismiss one highly controversial discovery, soft tissue from the bone of a dinosaur. There is no question that soft tissue deteriorates very rapidly and can be at most a few thousand years old. There is no question as to what such a discovery must mean. Dinosaurs, at least the ones leaving remains with soft tissue, had to have been living at the same time humans lived. The question is, has such a discovery actually been made? Paleontologist Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina University has published her discovery of the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and soft tissue remains in a T. Rex. Though her work is widely discounted, John Asara of Harvard Medical School and researchers at Palo Alto have verified it.

The evidence is almost overwhelming. The conclusions, however, are even more astounding. Rather than admit the obvious, that the bones with the remains of soft tissue were young, the published reports maintain that the bones are millions of years old, but some process not now understood preserved the soft tissue. There is no evidence of such an unknown process. This is a classic attempt to make the evidence fit the preconception. ⁴¹ It is also a glaring example of “professional” bigotry. This kind of article can never be published without a claim that the bones are millions of years old. And if by some miracle such an admission slips past the Secular Humanist censors and gets published, then the author will be condemned worldwide. This one mention of the truth will probably cost the University where the author works grants and scholarships.

Eventually the well-orchestrated condemnation will cost the author her job, as documented repeatedly in Ben Stein’s movie Expelled.⁴²

No Great Ape Fossils

“No fossils of any of the great apes – gorillas, chimpanzees or orangutans – have ever been found. As far as the fossil record is concerned, they never existed; and yet we know from the evidence of our own eyes that they did, and do.”⁴³

Though hundreds, perhaps thousands, of news releases, newspaper articles, magazine articles, radio, video and internet announcements have proclaimed the discovery of a fossil of a great ape, none has ever been verified. Such discoveries have either proven to not be fossilized, and therefore much younger, or not to be a great ape. People who carefully examine the evidence and come to the reasoned conclusion that evolution is not scientifically valid because there are no reproductive links in the evolutionary chain are frequently charged with ignoring the evidence. Richard Dawkins claims to refute the fossil gap arguments in numerous books, although he doesn’t really refute them at all. He just dismisses the arguments with a bald, unsupported statement that large numbers of intermediates exist.

“Creationists are deeply enamored of the fossil record …[They] repeat, over and over, the mantra that it is full of ‘gaps’: ‘Show me your “intermediates!”‘ …We [have]…massive numbers … to document evolutionary history … beautiful ‘intermediates.’ … The fossil evidence for evolution in many major animal groups is wonderfully strong. Nevertheless there are, of course, gaps, and creationists love them obsessively.”⁴⁴

The truth is, there is nothing for mankind to link to. Neanderthals interbred with modern man. A skull found in Pestera cu Oase, “The Cave of Bones” in Romania, has characteristics of both so-called “species.”

“The skull bearing both older and modern characteristics is discussed in a paper by Erik Trinkaus of Washington University in St. Louis. The report appears in today’s [January 15, 2007] issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“…The researchers said the skull had the same proportions as a modern human head and lacked the large brow ridge commonly associated with Neanderthals. However, there were also features that are unusual in modern humans, such as frontal flattening, a fairly large bone behind the ear and exceptionally large upper molars, which are seen among Neanderthals and other early hominids.

“Such differences raise important questions about the evolutionary history of modern humans,” said co-author Joao Zilhao of the University of Bristol, England. ⁴⁵

Therefore, Neanderthals are men. Without any fossil evidence of creatures for man to evolve from, evolution of humans is a religious leap of faith. There is no evidence of any link and no fossil evidence of anything to link to.

Mitochondrial DNA

Speaking of links, the most important aspect of the soft tissue discovery in the dinosaur is the DNA. DNA is in all cells of all living organisms. The tiniest cell in the human body contains the same DNA in the nucleus as the largest cell. This genetic coding determines hair color, shape of our nostrils, and every other detail of our body. As every student of high school biology knows, this DNA inside the nucleus contains genetic material from both our mother and our father. But many people are unaware of another type of DNA known as mitochondrial DNA. Mitochondrial DNA exists within the cell’s mitochondria outside of the nucleus and contains only genetic material from our mothers. Since there is no mixing of genetic material, a child’s mitochondrial DNA should be an exact duplicate of the mother’s mitochondrial DNA.

Mitochondrial DNA controls individual cell functions, not genetically encoded information. Infinite generations with genetically different fathers can have identical mitochondrial DNA but radically different physical characteristics. This should allow for a trace of mitochondrial DNA back to the beginning the human race. We could perform this trace, except for the problem of genetic mutations. Since a child’s normal mitochondrial DNA is identical to his mother’s, any mutation starts a new line. Minor mutations are difficult to detect and major mutations, such as those caused by massive radiation exposure, produce children who are unable to survive. But a few extremely rare mutations have produced traceable lines.

In 1997, Nature Genetics published an article with the innocuous title “A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control rate.” An abstract is available online for free. Though the technical language is absolutely necessary for accuracy, it distracts the average reader. Even with nothing but the abstract, the force of this study is overwhelming.

“…We report a direct measurement of the intergenerational substitution rate in the human CR [Control Region – a section of the DNA that controls other sections of DNA]. We compared DNA sequences of two CR hypervariable segments from close maternal relatives, from 134 independent mtDNA lineages spanning 327 generational events. Ten substitutions were observed, resulting in an empirical rate of 1/33 generations, or 2.5/site/Myr. This is roughly twenty-fold higher than estimates derived from phylogenetic analyses. This disparity cannot be accounted for simply by substitutions at mutational hot spots, suggesting additional factors that produce the discrepancy between very near-term and long-term apparent rates of sequence divergence. The data also indicate that extremely rapid segregation of CR sequence variants between generations is common in humans, with a very small mtDNA bottleneck.”⁴⁶

What this study did was take mitochondrial DNA samples from living volunteers and compared it to mitochondrial DNA from their ancestors. The test subjects had to have accurate records of their ancestors for hundreds of years, so most, if not all, test subjects had to be European. Corpses had to be available with accurate records and preserved well enough that mitochondrial DNA could be obtained. The study went back 327 generations, approximately 550 years.

The test results proved that mutations happen at a significantly higher rate than geneticists thought possible. The resulting statistical analysis came to two stunning conclusions.

First, applying the rate of 2.5/site/Myr (this refers to the ten changes observed in 327 generations) to the oldest human skeletons ever-tested make those skeletons less than 10,000 years old. And this 10,000-year-old date is an upper limit. Catastrophes powerful enough to move the moon out of orbit, move marine ammonites to the top of Mount Everest and tilt Lake Titicaca could easily, temporarily and dramatically, increase the mutation rate, making the 10,000-year-old date too old.

Second is the “very small mtDNA bottleneck.” This means that at some point in the history of the human race there were very few women. Bryan Sykes, author of The Seven Daughters of Eve believes that everyone currently alive can be traced back to one of seven women. Though Sykes is a well-respected English geneticist, as a committed Secular Humanist he makes two common though critical errors. These two errors have become the “standard” which any geneticist who expects to be published must adhere to. These errors are required by the religious dogma of Secular Humanism. Because his religious dogma demands that the human race is much older than the scientific evidence shows, he makes the leap of faith that the 2.5/site/Myr was lower in the past. His second error is assuming by a leap of faith, without any scientific evidence, that these seven women represent the smallest point of the bottleneck.

The Bible says that the sons of Noah brought their wives on the ark. These three women are the smallest point of the bottleneck. Their daughters might be the seven women of Bryan Sykes. Since conditions at that time could easily cause increased genetic mutations, their daughters, granddaughters or great granddaughters could easily be the seven women isolated by Bryan Sykes. When you read The Seven Daughters of Eve, understand that the last part of the book is devoted to fictional indoctrination. He novelizes each of these women and places each of them in a “cavewoman” setting. This is as antiscientific an approach as possible. Nevertheless the book was published. The scientific evidence of Mitochondrial DNA concludes that the human race is much younger than the published dates, less than 10,000 years, and that at one time in the very recent past the entire human race had no more than seven women. Sykes added the cavewoman fictions to assure publication. Such fabrications are the essence of the academic requirements for upholding the secularist dogma.⁴³

Thermodynamics

Engineers can earn a PhD in many subcategories of the massive field of thermodynamics as long as they also do their part to support the uniformitarian belief system. The dynamics of heat affects all other aspects of engineering. The first two laws of thermodynamics are well-tested and well-proved. While the implications are massive, the first two laws are simple. The first law of thermodynamics: The conservation of energy. Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter in the universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another. According to the first law of thermodynamics the universe is either 1) eternal, 2) created out of nothing, or 3) came into existence through some process that we know nothing about.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states “in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state.” This is also commonly referred to as entropy. Another way of stating entropy is that all energy changes are in a downward direction.⁴⁷ Without a belief in the religious dogma that the universe is infinite and can therefore obtain energy from “outside” the system (which is scientifically unprovable), entropy will eventually lead to a “heat death” for the entire universe. Everything in the universe will be motionless, at a uniform temperature near absolute zero, broken down into subatomic particles.

“While the early faint Sun paradox does not tell us that the Solar System is only thousands of years old, it does seem to rule out the age being billions of years.”⁴⁸

Dr. Danny R. Faulkner

In fact, each one of these points seems to rule out the age being billions of years old.

“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I’ll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”⁴⁹

Isaac Asimov

_______________________________

1 Charles Darwin, “Letter to Asa Gray,” (Harvard Professor of Biology), 18 June, 1857.

2 John Adams, “Argument in defence of the [English] soldiers in the Boston Massacre trial,” December 1770.

3 Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, first edition published by Osgood and Company, 1883.

4 Samuel Johnson, The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, 1759.

5 Dennis Prager, “Breastfeeding as a Religion,” World Net Daily, http://wnd.com/, posted November 11, 2003 1:00 am Eastern.

6 Richard W. Pogge, Astronomy 162: Introduction to Stars, Galaxies, & the Universe, 2006, http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/-pogge/Ast162/Unit2/sunshine.html

7 “Fusion”, Nobelprize.org updated 9 Mar 2013  http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/fusion/sun_4.html

8 Akridge, R. 1980. “The Sun Is Shrinking.” Acts & Facts. 9 (4) and Faulkner, D. 1998. “The Young Faint Sun Paradox and the Age of the Solar System.” Acts & Facts. 27 (6).

9 Daily Mail online, October 3, 2011 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2044480/NASAs-SDO-satellite-shows-boiling-sun-stunning-detail.html#ixzz2MnMZZ5lS

10 Ethan Siegal PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida Starts with a Bang. “How the Sun works, from the inside out”, originally posted August 12, 2011.

11 D. Russell Humphreys, Steven A. Austin, John R. Baumgardner, and Andrew A. Snelling, “Helium Diffusion Age of 6,000 Years Supports Accelerated Nuclear Decay,” Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal. (CRSQ) Vol 41 No 1 June 2004, Creation Research.org, Copyright © 2004 by Creation Research Society. Also Dr. Don DeYoung, Thousands, Not Billions: Challenging an Icon of Evolution Questioning the Age of the Earth, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, Inc., 2005.

12 Utah Geological Survey, Utah.gov.

13 Radiometric Dating background can be studied on Talk Origins.org., especially the article Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale: Circular Reasoning or Reliable Tools? Andrew MacRae Copyright 1997-2004 [Text last updated: October 2, 1998] and also these two books: G. Brent Dalrymple, The Age of the Earth. Stanford University Press: Stanford, CA, 1991. G. Faure, Principles of Isotope Geology, 2nd. edition. John Wiley and Sons: New York, NY, 1986.

14 Press release, Public Information Office, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, NASA, July 21, 1994.

15 Andrew A. Snelling “The Earth’s magnetic field and the age of the Earth,” first published: Creation (Creation Ministries International), 13(4):44-48 September 1991.

16 Alexandra Witze, “Geomagnetic Flip-Flops in a Flash,” Science News, September 25, 210 Vol. 178, Number 7, and R.S. Coe, and M. Prevot, 1989. “Evidence suggesting extremely rapid field variation during a geomagnetic reversal,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands, vol. 92, pp. 296-297.

17 http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch3-grand-canyon.asp

18 G.R. Morton, (An old-earth creationist apologist) “Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look,” 1998, home.entouch.net.

19 J.B. Delair and E.F. Oppe, “The Lost Sea of Andes,” in Charles Hapgood’s The Path of the Pole, Chilton Book Company, Philadelphia, PA, 1970.

20 Donald W. Patten and Samuel R. Windsor, “Catastrophic Theory of Mountain Uplifts (A Crustal Deformation Theory),” Catastrophism and Ancient History Vol. XIII Part 1 January 1991.

21 “Ancient temple found under Lake Titicaca,” BBC News, UK, Wednesday, 23 August, 2000, 11:04 GMT 12:04.

22 J. P. Davidson, W. E. Reed, and P. M. Davis, “The Rise and Fall of Mountain Ranges,” in Exploring Earth: An Introduction to Physical Geology, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1997.

23 Erich A. Von Fange, “Time Upside Down,” Creation Research Quarterly, June 1974.

24 National Geographic, July 26, 2008, “Tiny Fossils reveal Warm Antarctic Past,” and AntarcticConnection.com reports on the Antarctic research stations.

25 Sean Pitman, M.D., in a PowerPoint presentation titled “Ancient Ice,” created in Jan 2006, including testimony from a phone interview with Bob Cardin, project manager to recover one of the P38s lost on the glacier.

26 Fred Hall, “Ice Cores Not All That Simple,” AEON II: 1, 1989:199.

27 “Superbridge,” NOVA, PBS, November 12, 1997.

28 Dr. Nathan Green, online course overview for GEO.101, “Introduction to Geology,” Spring 2006, University of Alabama.

29 GeorgiaEncyclopedia.org gives background on the canyon but attributes its underlying geology to the “millions of years” formation theory. See also “Canyon Creation,” by Rebecca Gibson, Answers in Genesis, September 2000.

30 National Park Service report on Wall Arch collapse with before and after photos, August 4-5, 2008.

31 National Park Services Website.

32 Dave E. Matson, “How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments?” on Infidels.org. copyright 1995.

33 GORP.com (Great Outdoor Recreation Page.)

34 “Cave Reveals Southwest’s Abrupt Climate Swings During Ice Age,” Science Daily.com, January 25, 2010.

35 American Museum of Natural History website, “How Old are Kimberlites and Diamonds?” see also Novori.com for history and manufacture of synthetic diamonds.

36 Andrew Snelling (Dr.), “Radiocarbon in Diamonds Confirmed,” Answers in Genesis, November 7, 2007. (This study was conducted during the RATE (Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth) research project at the Institute for Creation Research.)

37 “Coal, Volcanism and Noah’s Flood,” TJ (Technical Journal) 1(1): Creation Ministries International, 11–29 April 1984.

38 A.A. Snelling, “The Recent Origin of Bass Strait Oil and Gas,” Creation, 5 (2):43–46 March 1982.5

39 Phil McCafferty, “Instant petrified wood?” Popular Science, October 1992, pp. 56-57. also Hamilton Hicks, ‘Mineralized sodium silicate solutions for artificial petrification of wood,’ United States Patent Number 4,612,050, September 16,1986, pp. 1-3. As cited by: Steven Austin, CatastroRef—“Catastrophe Reference Database: Catastrophes in Earth History, Geologic Evidence, Speculation and Theory,” Institute for Creation Research, San Diego. Entry no. 267.

40 Michael Oard, Frozen in Time: The Wooly Mammoth, The Ice Age and the Bible, Green Forest, AR: Master Books, Inc., 2004.

41 Schweitzer, Mary H. and Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, North Carolina State University; John R. Horner, Montana State University; Jan B. Toporski, Carnegie Institution of Washington Geophysical Laboratory. “Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus Rex.” Science, March 25, 2005. (NC State, the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences and the National Science Foundation funded the research.)

42 Kevin Miller, Ben Stein, writers, Producers Logan Craft, Walt Ruloff and John Sullivan, Director Nathan Frankowski. Assoc. Prod. Mark Mathis. Ed. Simon Tondeur. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. © 2008 Premise Media Corporation, Rampart Films Production.

43 Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry. W.W. Norton, New York, N.Y., 2001.

44 Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, Free Press, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, also by Bantam Press Transworld Publishers in Great Britain, 2009.

45 Randolph E. Schmid (Associated Press), “Skull Suggests Interbreeding of Neanderthal and Modern Man,” The Denver Post, January 15, 2007.

46 Parsons, Thomas J., et. al. “A high observed substitution rate in the human mitochondrial DNA control region.” Nature Genetics 15, 363 – 368 (1997).

47 M.J. Farabee, The Online Biology Book (Farabee is a member of the Biology faculty at Estrella Mountain Community College, Avondale, Arizona. emc.maricopa.edu

48 Faulkner, D. 1998. “The Young Faint Sun Paradox and the Age of the Solar System. ” Acts & Facts. 27 (6).

49 Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind. Prometheus Books, 1997.