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Transcript 348A — Creation Versus Evolution
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. Good evening. Perhaps you could help me a little bit with a kind of perplexing problem I've encountered. I go to a local college, and I'm taking a geology course. And in the course of studies there have been a number of people who have come into the class and preached on their evolutionary theories. And the textbooks of course promote the theory that the earth is some four and a half billion years old.
It's very hard to refute these claims, because the staff or faculty has the general opinion that they know everything that has happened from the beginning of time, almost on a personal level. They feel very confident in their belief. Could you possibly give me any kind of background to help me in these studies, so that at least in my own mind I could have your view of the age of the earth. And how can I prove this out for my own well being?
HC: The question is raised, "How can I know that the earth is not four and a half billion years old? How can I know something that is more trustworthy than what is being offered by scientists today?"
First of all, any secular scientist (and unfortunately, a few Christian scientists, that is, scientists who are Christians, who have come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as theistic evolution) effectively denies the Biblical account of the Flood of Noah's day. You read the language of Genesis 6, 7 and 8. Read it very carefully, very slowly. That language leaves no possibility except that at one time in the earth's existence this earth was destroyed by water, so that there was tremendous mountain building afterwards, and so on. The fact is, read Psalm 104 in the light of Genesis 6, and there it says, in Psalm 104, that the valleys were deepened and the mountains were raised up, and so on, to indicate that there was a place for the water that came upon the earth.
Now these secular scientists do not acknowledge that such a drastic thing happened. They operate from the vantage point that everything has been uniform, that change has occurred without that kind of a cataclysmic event. The Flood alone, therefore, negates all of their presuppositions.
You must also remember that when they look at evidence, they measure, for example, the amount of Carbon 14 in carbon, and they measure the amount of Carbon 12, and then they make certain assumptions as to what this means. Well, carbon is a little more exact, because it's more recent in history. The half life of carbon is only 5,730 years, or thereabouts. But let's talk about argon, or uranium – some of this radiometric dating. They measure the various elements that are in a rock, and then they make certain conclusions, or make certain assumptions concerning what has happened in the past. And on the basis of these assumptions they arrive at their conclusions.
Well obviously, their conclusions can't be any more accurate than their assumption. And so while they may be very confident of what they're stating, we know from the beginning that their assumptions are erroneous. Their assumption that there's never been a flood, their assumption that all things have begun from an evolutionary beginning, these are wrong assumptions, right from the very beginning.
More than that, from the Bible we have the clear statement in Genesis 1 and Exodus 20, and elsewhere, that God created the heavens and the earth in six days. God spoke, and it was so. This immediately negates everything that the secular scientist is saying, because he denies that God can bring these things into existence just by speaking.
We have a powerful dramatization of this creative act at the wedding of Cana of Galilee, as it's recorded in John 4. There were these six large stone jars filled with water, which is H2O, hydrogen and oxygen. And instantaneously Jesus turned it into wine. Now wine also has the element carbon in it. Therefore it was a creative act.
We see it when He multiplied the loaves and the fish. This was an act of creation. Only God could do this. And if He could do it in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, certainly He could do it when He created the heavens and the earth.
Moreover, if you've studied Carbon 14 at all, have you noticed that at some point they've indicated that the rate of formation of new Carbon 14 (and it's formed by the act of cosmic rays coming into our atmosphere) all over the world is at a higher rate than the overall rate of disintegration of Carbon 14. The rate of disintegration actually is about seventy-five percent of the rate of formation.
Now actually, if this world were hundreds of thousands of years old, even as short a life-span as 100,000 years, and if Carbon 14 had been being formed at a uniform rate for the last 100,000 years, eventually you would get equilibrium, so that the rate of decay all over the world would equal the rate of formation. So scientists puzzle over the fact that the rate of decay is only about seventy-five percent of the rate of formation. It's the kind of a phenomenon that we would expect if the beginning of the formation of Carbon 14 was a very recent phenomenon, that is, if the sun had been created only very recently.
Let me illustrate this way. Let's say the rate of formation of new Carbon 14 was one hundred pounds per year. That's a ridiculous figure, but just for the sake of argument, it was hundred pounds per year. Well, the first year, that means at the end of a year there would be hundred pounds of Carbon 14 in the whole earth that could begin to disintegrate. The next year another hundred pounds would have been formed. So now you have two hundred pounds that disintegrate. So the rate of decay would be at a higher, there would be more pounds disintegrating every year.
Let's say that one pound disintegrated every year out of every hundred pounds that existed. Well, the first year one pound would disintegrate, the second year two hundred pounds now have been formed. There would be two pounds disintegrating. The third year another hundred pounds was formed, and so there would be three pounds disintegrating, until finally you'd get equilibrium. So the amount going in would equal the amount going out. And that's what you would expect if the world was hundreds of thousands of years old.
The fact is, however, a lot lesser amount is being formed. That is, a lot lesser amount is being disintegrated than that which is being formed, indicating that the beginning of the formation of Carbon 14 was fairly recent. And I think it can be shown that it identifies with the longevity that the Bible talks about, namely, about 13,000 years.
Now these are just a few things. Or again, if you look at the oceans. Now you might talk to your geology teacher same time about the oceans. In geology you learn about the continental masses, you learn about the scaling of rock because of ice action, you learn about the disintegration of rock because of the action of wind and of rain, and how these sediments flow into the rivers and then into the ocean.
Now you would expect that if the earth had been around for a long time, let's say even as short a period as 1 million years, there ought to be some kind of an equilibrium between the oceans and the continental masses. That is, we ought to find the same percentages of elements in the oceans and in the sediments on the ocean floor as we find in the continental masses, because through a million years, through this kind of erosion that takes place, the various elements as they appear percentage-wise in the continental masses would also appear in the ocean water.
Actually, there are all kinds of books written by scientists who know nothing about the Bible, and they have measured rather carefully the percentages of the various elements in the continental masses, and they have measured the various elements in solution in ocean water, as well as on the ocean floor, and there's no relationship between the two. That would also indicate that the oceans are very young.
More than that, you would expect that if you knew how much of any element flowed into ocean solution each year from all of the continental masses, then if you could measure the same amount in ocean solution, you would be able to tell how old that ocean really is. In other words, let's say there was a pound of silicone that actually eroded each year from all of the continental masses all over the earth, and eventually ended up in the ocean in ocean solution. And that was occurring at the rate of about one pound per year, again a ridiculous figure, but only for the sake of this illustration. And now you went into the ocean, and you took samples of ocean water and found that after calculating all of the amount of silicone in the ocean solution you found that there were a million pounds of silicone in ocean solution, or on the ocean floor, that would indicate that probably the earth then is a million years old, because it would take about a million years, at an erosion rate of a pound per year, to arrive at a million pounds in ocean solution.
Well, scientists have actually done this. They've measured the elements in ocean solution. Lo and behold, they were flabbergasted to find that eighteen of the elements in ocean solution have a residency of less than 1,000 years. That is, they are in such short supply in ocean solution that they would have been provided by less than 1,000 years continental weathering. Now that's an astounding fact, if indeed these oceans had been millions of years old.
The fact is, silicone, in measuring the amount of silicone in ocean solution, they find that it is found in ocean solution in an amount that would have been provided by about 8,000 years of continental weathering. Well, that's very close to the figure that the Bible shows to be the age of the earth. The Bible shows the age of the earth to be 13,000 years, I believe. And so that figure isn't far off at all.
Of course you might ask, "Well then, maybe you only find silicone in short supply in ocean solution because it's all on the ocean floor." But they've done a lot of work on the ocean floor in recent years. And again they find that most of the ocean floor is almost bare of sediment. Vast areas are almost bare of sediment.
To get around this, scientists have concocted the idea that the ocean floors are great plates that slip under the continental masses, cleaning themselves. And that's the reason that we have the ocean floor almost bare of sediment. Well, that's purely a theory. There's no evidence that this is happening. In fact, there's lots of evidence that this is not happening. If this were occurring, you would think there would be a vast pile-up of sediments along all of the continental areas. And this just isn't the case. There are deeper sediments along same of the continental shelves, but not along all of them.
If scientists would look at all the evidence they have in view, and dismiss their evolutionary theories, which is actually the ideology that goads them on, and would get rid of their inhibition insofar as recognizing a Creator God, then they could look at their evidence with open eyes, and they'd have to conclude that the world is 10 or 15,000 years old.
CALLER: The theory of plate-tectonics seems to permeate the entire course, since this is a recent discovery, and seems to, scientifically, as they see it, provide the answer as to why the continents have shifted and the poles have shifted. They promulgate this theory that they have found the reason for their theories are the magnetic lines in rock, which they have taken core samples from in the earth, showing that at one time in history the rocks were pointed in another direction than what the poles are now. Since they don't feel that the poles shifted, they feel, I suppose, that the plates have shifted.
It's very hard to talk to a professor who holds this theory, naturally.
HC: All you have to ask him is, where is the proof of this? Now the magnetic bands, that is no proof. Those magnetic bands could have been caused from lots of things. In the flood of Noah's day, when the bowels of the earth were opening up, and the volcanoes were acting, and the magna was flowing from the earth, and the waters from heaven were enveloping the earth, there would have been all kinds of erratic motions of the earth, possibly, which could have caused a shifting in the magnetic bands, backwards and forwards.
They simply are in theory relating the magnetic bands to plate-tectonics. Now the interesting thing is that thirty years ago, or thereabouts, the idea of plate-tectonics was virtually unknown altogether. But you see, as some of these other questions have surfaced, they've got to find an answer. And rather than go to the Bible, they concoct another theory. And it's purely a theory.
They have found, for example, that there was at one time one huge continent. And they propose that over the last 150 million years this continent has broken up, and now we have the North and South American continents, and so on. Well, they're correct, of course, that there was one huge continent at one time. The Bible indicates this.
But there's no evidence that they have been able to bring forth that there is movement between the continents today. With all of their ability to measure the speed of light and all kinds of other things, they have not been able to measure any perceptible movement between the continents, which is what you would expect if this theory of plate-tectonics held, or if this theory that the continents are drifting apart at the rate of several centimeters a year, so that over the last 150 million years we have what we have today, held. The Bible simply says that in the days of Peleg (and according to the Biblical record, it was about 5,000 years ago) the earth was divided. The Bible is very matter of fact that there was one continent, and the earth was divided.
But it doesn't suggest for a moment that this is a very slow moving kind of thing.
CALLER: Then it is cataclysmic, according to the Bible. I'm just curious as to what evidence is shown in that respect, something to approach this man with. I don't want to really contest his viewpoint, other than from a scientifically based type of proposition. They do have kind of a way of reducing a student to look like a blithering idiot, especially if it has anything to do with a belief in God. So that's why I'm trying to approach him in this way.
HC: Well, of course you cannot convince your college professor that he is wrong. He is blinded in his faith. His faith is in a "no God" creator, that is, that there is no Creator God. His faith is in his evolutionary theories. He builds everything around this. He is altogether blind in this.
The best I would suggest is that you do some research on the matter of oceans. I wrote a book called "Adam When," which you might get at your Christian bookstore, which lays out this thing. And I think in one of the chapters I went into this whole matter of the ocean situation. And read that very carefully. And then pose some of those questions to him, and see what he wants to do with them.
CALLER: Excellent. I appreciate your time, and I will make one last comment. One other class I'm taking is Psychology. I called about a week ago, and I wanted to know about psychic people, whether to avoid them or not. And it just happens, as a follow-up to that, that the college has gone ahead and recruited the services of a local psychic person, who is going to be speaking at the college, and it's a required part of the curriculum, that everyone attend this. And of course a psychic will be giving demonstrations of the occult upon members of the audience. And I thought that you might like to know the trend that the school system is going in. And of course if you don't attend they make you out to look like a religious nut. So I'm sure you're familiar with that.
HC: You see, at that point you have to make a decision. Am I going to allow myself to be maligned, to be slandered, to be called a religious nut, and stand for Christ nevertheless? Or am I going to try to be accepted by all and deny Christ?
As Christians we're going to suffer affliction. As Christians we are going to be maligned. We are going to be misunderstood. We, however, must remember, ultimately we answer to God, not to man. And it's before Him that we stand or fall. And we want to be sure that we stand faithful before God.
CALLER: Okay. I didn't think it would ever come to this in the school system, but it's quite a shock. Thank you very much.
HC: Thank you for calling. Good night.