One of several 'geologically-recent' large volcanos on Mars; prior to space probe missions, scientists thought Mars was geographically smooth and geologically dead.

7. Creation and Earth

When debating the age of the Earth with creationists, evolutionists have learned to stick to just two issues: (1) radioactive decay age measurements of earthbound rocks, and (2) uniformitarian geological principles.

Radioactive isotope decay measurement methods are presented to the public as a precise and infallible means of determining the ages of fossil rocks. In the scientific literature, it is routine to see a fossil dated precisely to two or three significant figures in millions of years.

What is not mentioned, however, is that these precise dates are the result of statistical averaging. Individual measurements from the same rock often produce widely varying ages. Using different radioisotope methods also produces different ages, sometimes in disagreement by hundreds of millions of years.[1] Some evolutionary scientists have also admitted that virtually all of the supposedly precise dates of the geologic column are derived from interpolations and 'reasoned guesses,'[2] into which new evidence is 'reconciled.' Given such statistical uncertainties, the opportunity for human judgement -- and bias -- is considerable.

In the statistical analysis of any data, there is always the danger of distortion by the personal bias of the person conducting the analysis. The anti-evolutionist writer Phillip Johnson reports that, after his lectures at major universities, graduate students will often say to him, "In our lab, we only do experiments that we think are likely to confirm the head of the lab's theory. And if they don't come out right, we do them again and again until they do."[3] If this is true also in radioisotopic testing, and if radioisotope dating randomly provides extremely wide date variations, then one simply has to test until the desired date comes up.

When an established radioisotope date is contradicted, it's ignored. In one case, well-preserved DNA strands were found in a magnolia leaf that had been radioisotopically dated back 17 to 20 million years. The discoverer observed, "This means these compression fossils defy the prediction, from in vitro estimates of the rate of spontaneous hydrolysis, that no DNA would remain intact much beyond 10,000 years."[4]

In other words, laboratory testing proves DNA molecules cannot survive outside of living cells for more than ten thousand years -- but so what? The writer of the paper blithely comments: "What a good job not everybody knew that, grant reviewers included."[5] No speculation this time . . . just weak humor!

Obviously, the magnolia leaf is not as old as radioisotopic methods state. Since intact segments of supposedly hundred-million-year-old dinosaur DNA have been found as well, this is not a one-time fluke.

So much for radioisotopic dating; its methodology is open to question and its results contradict fact.

But what about the uniformitarian principles of geology?

These principles state, "The present is key to the past." We see a river slowly depositing silt at a fraction of an inch a year, we see thousands of feet of sedimentary fossil strata, and we conclude that all of it must have taken millions of years to form. We see another river at the bottom of a canyon, and calculate from the present-day erosion rate that the canyon was carved over millions of years by that river. The present-day process is simply projected into the past, and invariably yields ages of millions of years.

Which is precisely what evolutionary theory desires.

Of course, if there was a cataclysmic worldwide Flood, then such projections are nonsense. Strata and canyon alike could be laid down and eroded in a matter of days. Although there seems no way of telling how fast sediments were moved into position, evolutionists insist that some geological features 'must' have taken millions of years to form. It is true that sometimes it is possible tell whether features are the result of catastrophic or gradualist processes. However, when such a distinction can be made, the evidence always points to catastrophism.

Such is the evidence of the fossil strata themselves. In their pioneering book, The Genesis Flood, scientific creationists John C. Whitcomb, Jr. and Henry M. Morris seriously challenge the vaunted 'consistency' of the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record. For example, 'old' geological strata (containing more 'primitive fossils) are often found laying comfortably on top of 'young' geologic strata (containing more 'advanced' fossils) -- in defiance of gradual processes of erosion and deposition. They describe the evolutionary explanation:

These phenomena are found almost everywhere in hilly or mountainous regions and have been attributed to 'thrust-faulting.' The concept is that great segments of rock strata have been somehow separated from their roots and made to slide far over adjacent regions. Subsequent erosion then modifies the transported 'nappe' so that the young strata on top are removed, leaving only the older strata superposed on the stationary young rocks beneath. There are various modifications of this concept, but all are equally difficult to conceive mechanically. As we have seen, many show little or no actual physical evidence of such tremendous and catastrophic movement.[6]

In other words, evolutionists invoke miraculous catastrophism to explain away the evidence! It's as if evolutionists believe in a god after all -- a god who moves in mysterious ways indeed!

Whitcomb and Morris say it is best to do away with 'old' and 'young' evolutionary rock chronologies entirely, and recognize strata as sediments containing lifeforms from different environmental zones that co-existed at the time of the Flood. Evolutionary geologists find the word 'flood,' however, to be highly controversial. Astronomer Fred Whipple, in describing the floodlands of Mars, makes a side reference to how flood theory is disdained by evolutionary geologists on Earth even when the evidence is overwhelming. He writes:

In 1923 J. H. Bretz presented evidence that the Channeled Scabland of eastern Washington [i.e., the state of Washington] was created by catastrophic flooding. This 'outrageous' theory germinated for more than two decades before it was taken very seriously by the geological community.[7]

This region is 150 kilometers west of Spokane, Washington. It is called Dry Falls; it is believed about 2000 cubic kilometers of water once poured over this terrain in a spasm of catastrophic flooding. The sharp edges and layered vertical sides are reminiscent of another supposedly multi-million year old geologic formation: the Grand Canyon. Yet the Channeled Scablands unquestionably formed from a flood! It might have been only a local glacial flood -- but evolutionary geologists were so allergic to the word 'flood' that they rejected the truth for more than two decades!

The same reactionary refusal of evolutionary geologists to mention the word 'flood,' as if it were a shocking obscenity, was present in their treatment of Mars, where the channels spotted by Mariner 9 were attributed to lava flows until the later high-resolution photographs of the Viking missions proved that position untenable -- and even so, it took years for geologists to finally acknowledge that the Martian channels were cut by catastrophic flooding.

The lesson is, when an evolutionary geologist claims to know how old a landscape is -- well, he doesn't.

Another question: all those fossils -- how did the living organisms get buried rapidly enough to avoid bacterial decay? Creationism answers with: catastrophic flooding. The 'burial by gradual accumulation of sediments' concept of evolution may work with tiny molluscs -- but not with giant dinosaurs, whose bones would decay long before gentle sedimentation could bury them. Advanced evolutionary textbooks will acknowledge that large fossils were buried by flooding, but this is unmentioned in children's science books. Children might misunderstand.

Evolutionists say that the fossilization process is 'not fully understood.' These are the words of religious faith, not science. Actually, the process is well understood -- simply bury a living creature under large amounts of sediment, and we can observe fossilization happening even today. Yet evolution treats this as a great mystery! How ironic that creationism, born from an ancient religious text, should be more scientific than the reigning scientific hypothesis of our day!

Most educated people would have expected the discovery of intelligent life on another planet to be the crowning proof of evolution and the final blow to belief in the Bible. The opposite is true.

The wisdom of the age is that religion is subjective and personal, evolutionary science is objective and universal. Thus we expect the origins of the universe to be revealed by materialist scientists -- while ancient religious superstition would only be a stumbling block.

But . . . what if there was a Creator?

Then there is a spiritual dimension to reality, and materialism itself becomes irrational when taken to an extreme. Material science, so effective in providing medical cures and household improvements, would fail to explain cosmic origins. What if there was a Creator? Then evolution would be religion, and creation would be science. And on Earth and Mars, the facts so testify.