Appendix: Young Earth "Show And Tell"
APPENDIX
"SHOW AND TELL"
Many "young earth" speakers travel around the country with slide demonstrations and painted-up plaster casts of supposed archaeological artifacts:
Plaster Casts. If someone shows you a plaster cast of an item supposedly showing "proof" of a young earth, immediately discount the item. Put your thinking cap on! If you cannot view the original object; or, take it to a laboratory and test it to validate the claims made for it, it has no scientific value whatsoever! This would cover: a. Plaster casts of items embedded in coal or stone that seem to show "scientific anomalies." b. Plaster casts of dinosaur tracks with what appear to be human tracks inside. Even those who advocate the "young earth" position are retreating from these as proof of their position. Below is a quote from a scientist who is also a young earth advocate. As you can see, they disagree among themselves.
"Over the past several years, some so-called "evidence" for creation has been shown not to be reliable. Some of these are... supposed human and dinosaur footprints found together at the Paluxy River in Texas... a supposed human handprint found in "dinosaur- age rock." a dead "plesiosaur" caught near New Zealand."
Actually, the dead "plesiosaur" caught by the Zuiyo-maru, was found to be carcass of a dead basking shark.
"Kimura, Fuji, and others (1978) concluded that the composite tissue sample studies indicated that the horny fiber was essentially identical to known basking shark elastoidin in both its morphology and amino acid composition. They remarked, "If the horny fiber was pulled out from an animal belonging to other classes except Chondrichthyes [sharks and relatives], it should be significantly different...These results strongly suggest that this unidentified creature is a basking shark or closely related species." (Kimura, Fuji, and others 1978, p 73)."
Dragon Legends. Now we come to slides depicting dragon legends to prove that dinosaurs walked with man. Actually, the only time dinosaurs walked with man was in the movie, Jurassic Park! Yes, the word "dragon" is in the Bible; but, in all cases, the context reveals it is talking about an existing water or land animal of some type. This use of legends as fact only proves the lengths to which young earth advocates will go to prove their point. The Bible warns about legends and traditions in Colossians 2:8,
"Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ."
Coal. "Up to 400 feet thickness of strata have formed since 1980 at Mount St. Helens." When you hear a statement like this, you immediately think of some type of sedimentary rock, Wrong!
What you have is sedimentation made up of ash, dead tree trunks, etc. Let us get our brain in gear! What does this have to do with the amount of time it takes coal to form. It proves nothing! Do you have a couple of thousand years, or so, to wait around to see if an inch of coal is going to form? Peat is not coal. This is from "Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism," Steven A. Austin, Ph.D., AIG Web Site. Again, these so-called scientists disagree among themselves.
4. Erosion of Niagara Falls. Many young earth speakers use an impressive slide show and a transfixing narration on the subject: "The rim of Niagara Falls erodes at four to five feet per year, indicating that it could not be more than 10,000 years old. Therefore, the earth is not more than 10,000 years old."
Let us think rationally! The rate at which Niagara Falls erodes has nothing to do with the age of the earth. It only has to do with the rate of erosion of Niagara Falls.
5. Ice Age After the Flood. The young earth advocates claim the flood caused an ice age. We will quote Henry M. Morris:
"The great release of energy during the Flood caused much water from the new oceans to enter the atmosphere. This moisture fell at the poles as snow and caused the Ice Age." Morris, Henry M., 1974, Scientific Creationism, Green Forest, AR: Master books, pp. 126-127.
Once again, we have to recommend that we be as those in Acts 17:11 who, "...Searched the scriptures daily, whether these things were so." When we search the Scriptures from Genesis 6:1-22, to the call of Abraham in Genesis 12:1-20, we can find no mention of an event corresponding to an "ice age." When a man's words do not measure up to "Thus saith the Lord," we have to conclude the man's words are false.
"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isaiah 8:20. In Genesis 1:2, God describes the great Ice Age when the frozen waters completely covered the earth. This was the judgment of the Original Creation and its inhabitants.
"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."