101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe (impolite version)

101 evidences for a young age of the earth and the universe is a steaming heap of arguments for young Earth creationism (YEC) with a grammatical disaster for a title, written by Donald Duck Don Batten, Doctor of Mungbeans, in June 2009 for Creation Ministries International (CMI). The original article can be found here^img. The text below is the version of 26th March, 2012. They twiddle it every now and then.

The text is a tour de farce of abuse of the uncertainty tactic in science dealing with the past designed to shore up the creaking epistemology of creationism. The author is a documentable idiot in every field he names, including Biblical scholarship, and has the joined-up thinking skills of a creationist. So it's an illustrated (in crayon) catalogue of logical stupidities, internal contradictions and arguments against a young Earth, plus circular reasoning as most of the links are to articles of the same site, and those from far more serious sources are as usual misinterpreted. Well done.

The list claims to have 101 points, because impressive numbers are impressive. So it repeats itself to get the numbers up, has several duplicates, and one item is even a copy of the preceding one. Yeah, it's a Gish Gallop, and a circlejerk as well: almost every reference link in the original article goes to creationist sources, usually on the same damn site.

But guess what? Gish Gallops are A BIT EASY TO REFUTE IN WRITING.

If you tried editing the polite version of this article and started punching the wall in frustration after a while, this is the place to say what you actually think.

Tired of laughing? RationalWiki has a slightly more serious article about 101 evidences for a young age of the Earth and the universe.

Table of Contents
Can science prove the age of the earth?
Biological evidence:		1  -  2  -  3  -  4  -  5  -  6  -  7  -  8  -  9  - 10 - 11
Geological evidence:		12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22
		23 - 24 - 25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32 - 33
		34 - 35 - 36 - 37 - 38 - 39 - 40 - 41 - 42 - 43 - 44
		45 - 46 - 47 - 48 - 49 - 50
Radiometric dating:		51 - 52 - 53 - 54 - 55 - 56 - 57 - 58 - 59 - 60 - 61
		62 - 63 - 64
Astronomical evidence:		65 - 66 - 67 - 68 - 69 - 70 - 71 - 72 - 73 - 74 - 75
		76 - 77 - 78 - 79 - 80 - 81 - 82 - 83 - 84 - 85 - 86
		87 - 88 - 89 - 90 - 91 - 92 - 93 - 94 - 95
Human history:		96 - 97 - 98 - 99 - 100 - 101
Removed arguments
Analysis
See also
Footnotes

Original article

Analysis

Can science prove the age of the earth?

No scientific method can prove the age of the universe or the earth, and that includes the ones we have listed here. Although age indicators are called "clocks" they aren't, because all ages result from calculations that necessarily involve making assumptions about the past. Always the starting time of the "clock" has to be assumed as well as the way in which the speed of the clock has varied over time. Further, it has to be assumed that the clock was never disturbed.

Yeah, where they disagree it's evidence they're wrong, and where they agree it's evidence of a conspiracy. Well done. Did you know that if you claim not to understand something, it makes it wrong? I didn't. In fact, I still don't. This is also the Nirvana fallacy, since it is discarding models based on their failing to provide absolute proof, regardless of how good the proof they provide is.

There is no independent natural clock against which those assumptions can be tested. For example, the amount of cratering on the moon, based on currently observed cratering rates, would suggest that the moon is quite old. However, to draw this conclusion we have to assume that the rate of cratering has been the same in the past as it is now. And there are now good reasons for thinking that it might have been quite intense in the past, in which case the craters do not indicate an old age at all (see below).

Reality is objective. If you do completely different things and get the same answer, it throws the single discordant number, like, ooh, six thousand years, into uncomfortably sharp relief. So, of course the scientists' numbers matching each other's and not yours is a conspiracy, and not you being thick. The author misunderstands crater counting, and is likely too incompetent to look at the moon and report what he sees accurately.

Ages of millions of years are all calculated by assuming the rates of change of processes in the past were the same as we observe today — called the principle of uniformitarianism. If the age calculated from such assumptions disagrees with what they think the age should be, they conclude that their assumptions did not apply in this case, and adjust them accordingly. If the calculated result gives an acceptable age, the investigators publish it.

What exactly did the author mean "what they think the age should be"? As in, there has to be a first person who publish a number that is drastically different from the status quo of six thousand years at some point. Is the author referring to the hypothesis that all today's number and calculations are wrong because some dude went mad/heretic and publish some different number than the "official" chronology? Or is the author referring to some giant conspiracy that is ongoing for hundreds of years that nobody seems to find evidence outside the book written thousands of years ago to contradict?

Examples of young ages listed here are also obtained by applying the same principle of uniformitarianism. Long-age proponents will dismiss this sort of evidence for a young earth by arguing that the assumptions about the past do not apply in these cases. In other words, age is not really a matter of scientific observation but an argument about our assumptions about the unobserved past.

Isn't it darling when genius autodidacts refute science in a gasp by writing their own logic and proving it wrong?

The assumptions behind the evidences presented here cannot be proved, but the fact that such a wide range of different phenomena all suggest much younger ages than are currently generally accepted, provides a strong case for questioning those accepted ages (about 14 billion years for the universe and 4.5 billion years for the solar system).

Indeed your "evidences" can't be "proved". They can be disproven, and you know it.

Also, a number of the evidences, rather than giving any estimate of age, challenge the assumption of slow-and-gradual uniformitarianism, upon which all deep-time dating methods depend.

So you don't like uniformitarianism after trotting it out. Did you know that I can prove mathematically that if 2+2=3, I am Brigitte Bardot? (2+2=3 ⇒ 4=3 ⇒ 1=0 ⇒ the number of people writing this who are not Brigitte Bardot=0 ⇒ everyone writing this is Brigitte Bardot ⇒ I am Brigitte Bardot. Et viola. Beer please.) Or: everything logically follows from bullshit.

Many of these indicators for younger ages were discovered when creationist scientists started researching things that were supposed to "prove" long ages. The lesson here is clear: when the evolutionists throw up some new challenge to the Bible's timeline, don't fret over it. Sooner or later that supposed evidence will be turned on its head and will even be added to this list of evidences for a younger age of the earth. On the other hand, some of the evidences listed here might turn out to be ill-founded with further research and will need to be modified. Such is the nature of science, especially historical science, because we cannot do experiments on past events (see "It's not science"img).

"Evolutionists" are not some secret fucking insurgent group (and this asshole, like so many other idiotic Fundies, calls "evolutionists" even those who study fields as Astronomy, where evolution has a very different meaning to the bological one). In 1862, you could be intelligent and educated and doubt evolution. In 2012, you have to be ignorant, deprived or hard of fucking thinking. A pile of the scientists who discovered this stuff were Christians. But they had some fucking intellectual integrity and respect for joined-up thinking. Just imagine if they'd actually read their Bibles and added up the contradictions. "Historical science" is a special creationist term meaning "things I don't like."

Science is based on observation, and the only reliable means of telling the age of anything is by the testimony of a reliable witness who observed the events. The Bible claims to be the communication of the only One who witnessed the events of Creation: the Creator himself. As such, the Bible is the only reliable means of knowing the age of the earth and the cosmos. See The Universe's Birth Certificateimg and Biblical chronogenealogiesimg (technical). In the end we believe that the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded.

This claim is that God personally is a reliable witness. And never mind that the book itself claims Moses wrote it; evidently, actually reading it was a bit hard. It's pretty long. God's recent application for a research grant was rejected on the grounds that: His best work had been done a very long time ago. It was described only in His own non-peer-reviewed vanity publication. No-one had ever been able to reproduce the results. Threats to all those filthy heathens who think the Bible is the opposite could not be absent at the end. May Eris confound Fundies as the author of this pile of manure.

Biological evidence

1

DNA in "ancient" fossilsimg. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years.

We can do 18,000 to 30,000 years reliably, and up to a million at a stretch. Notice that this is the very first point, and he's already saying stuff that's arguments against his 6,000-year (OK, 10,000 at an absolute stretch) timeframe.

2

Lazarus bacteriaimg — bacteria revived from salt inclusions supposedly 250 million years old, suggest the salt is not millions of years old. See also Salty sagaimg.

The age of the bacteria is questioned, but the age of the salt isn't. The paper questioning it even says so right there in the abstract. So second point, and we're at the first direct lie.

3

The decay in the human genome due to multiple slightly deleterious mutations each generation is consistent with an origin several thousand years ago. Sanford, J., Genetic entropy and the mystery of the genome, Ivan Press, 2005; see review of the bookimg and the interview with the author in Creation 30(4)img:45–47, September 2008. This has been confirmed by realistic modelling of population genetics, which shows that genomes are young, in the order of thousands of years. See Sanford, J., Baumgardner, J., Brewer, W., Gibson, P. and Remine, W., Mendel's Accountant: A biologically realistic forward-time population genetics program, SCPE 8(2):147–165, 2007.

To even understand this one, you have to (a) believe in the Fall of Man, (b) know the weird creation science claim that this actually means humans were cut off from God's life force and their genomes started "decaying". This is, of course, a smidgeon less than 100% accurate. There is no evidence of decay, and quite a chunk of evidence of, ahahaha, evolution: humans started herding cattle, so the milk-drinking mutant gene showed up independently in two places. Wonder if a doctor of agriculture would know about that. The last linked paper is from a computer science journal. Funnily enough it has fuck-all to say that's an earth-shattering revelation of biology. Fancy that.

4

The data for "mitochondrial Eveimg" are consistent with a common origin of all humans several thousand years ago.

Go read about mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). “Mitochondrial Eve” was 170,000 to 200,000 years ago. That's just a bit longer than 6,000 years. Well done, again. It's unfair to criticize this particular point too harshly, though. 170 thousand and 200 thousand are indeed several thousand.

5

Very limited variation in the DNA sequence on the human Y-chromosome around the worldimg is consistent with a recent origin of mankind, thousands not millions of years.

Yep, that's right, thousands: Y-chromosomal Adam lived 60,000 years ago, not millions. Not 6,000, though. This argument doesn't make sense even in creationism: Noah would be the Y-chromosomal "Adam," because the only males who survived the Flood (dated by Archbishop Ussher to 2348 BCE, so only 4,300 and some years ago) were Noah and his sons.

6

Many fossil bones "dated" at many millions of years old are hardly mineralized, if at all. See, for example, Dinosaur bones just how old are they really?img

Bones and teeth are already made of apatite, and we have a shitload of fossil bones which are dated many millions of years old that have been mineralized. And dinosaur bones date from as far back as 235 million years ago. And if you claim you didn't know either of those last two when you wrote this, I'll call you a liar.

7

Dinosaur blood cells, blood vesselsimg, proteinsimg (hemoglobinimg, osteocalcinimg, collagenimg) are not consistent with their supposed age, but make more sense if the remains are young.

Except the paleobiologists severely question the claimed find. Though they're just calling it "probably wrong," not "idiot bullshit" like your clutching at any straw.

8

Lack of 50:50 racemization of amino acids in fossilsimg "dated" at millions of years old, whereas complete racemization would occur in thousands of years.

Complete bollocks. Amino acid racemization dating of isoleucine goes back several million years just fine. And there is no fucking way you're going to make observed racemization fit a 6,000 year time scale.

9

Living fossilsimg — jellyfish, graptolites, coelacanth, stromatolites, Wollemi pine and hundreds more. That many hundreds of species could remain so unchanged, for even up to billions of years in the case of stromatolites, speaks against the millions and billions of years being real.

The jellyfish have actually changed somewhat, as have the coelacanths. Of the lifeforms given as examples, only the Wollemi pine is a species, and not such an old one as claimed. Graptolithinia are not "living" fossils, having died out 310 million years ago. The genus Lingula seems to have been doing pretty well pretty much unchanged (though it has changed) for the last 500 My. On the other hand, it has a strong claim to be considered the most boring genus on the planet. The "many hundreds of species" are out of millions of species. Only a tiny proportion of fossil species have modern counterparts. The key point, however, is that the "living fossils" didn't change much because they were well-adapted to a stable environment. This argument also presumes that the only changes are morphological — evolution also includes biochemical changes, behavioral changes, and others that are not preserved in the fossil record. Ironically, this supports evolution, a process taking many millions of years.

10

Discontinuous fossil sequences. E.g. Coelacanthimg, Wollemi pineimg and various "index" fossils, which are present in supposedly ancient strata, missing in strata representing many millions of years since, but still living today. Such discontinuities speak against the interpretation of the rock formations as vast geological ages—how could Coelacanths have avoided being fossilized for 65 million years, for example? See The "Lazarus effect": rodent "resurrection"!img

Fossilisation is a rare event, and for those fossils then to be dragged somewhere we can find them is even rarer. The linked articles suggest that fossils were all laid down during the Great Flood. This does not explain why dinosaurs (other than birds) are only found in the lower strata. If the flood was as suitable for the creation of fossils as is described, there should be more fossils than we actually find; the described mechanism would fossilise a large proportion of everything that was living at the time. We would also expect modern animals, such as cows, to be found in the fossil record. The author's interpretation of the data is inconsistent with the stated model. The Coelacanth has a logical explanation, since the Cretaceous Era, no new mountains have been formed in the Indian Ocean. That means that the fossils CANNOT be found on land after this time period. This is consistently overlooked in cdesign proponentists arguments

11

The ages of the world's oldest living organisms, treesimg, are consistent with an age of the earth of thousands of years.

The oldest living trees are younger than 6,000 years — but dendrochronology, which the linked article endorses, is not limited to studying a single tree. Because the thickness of rings differs depending on weather conditions during each season, tree ring patterns can be matched between living and dead trees, extending the record beyond the lifetime of a single tree. In suitable places, the record has been extended this way to roughly 11,000 years before present. Thus, even the tree trunks — which give dates exact to a single year — are at odds with a biblical timeline (not that they'll care very much as we'll see a lot of times in a number of the remaining points.) Last but not least, to think that because the oldest trees have such age means they're as old as the world itself is as dumb as to think that because the oldest person alive known has an age of 116 years the world has existed since 1907.

Geological evidence

12

Lack of plant fossils in many formations containing abundant animal / herbivore fossilsimg. E.g., the Morrison Formation (Jurassic) in Montana. See Origins 21(1):51–56, 1994. Also the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon has many track-ways (animals), but is almost devoid of plants. Implication: these rocks are not ecosystems of an "era" buried in situ over eons of time as evolutionists claim. The evidence is more consistent with catastrophic transport then burial during the massive global Flood of Noah's day. This eliminates supposed evidence for millions of years.

Except plants don't have bones to fossilize, you know? Neither do animal tracks. Massive fail. And plants do fossilize. Otherwise we wouldn't have coal. Looks like these idiots have never heard of Lagerstatten, rock formations that preserve soft-bodied animals, plants, and trace fossils almost perfectly, and are probably the best record of prehistoric ecosystems that we have. Even better? They formed in deep, anoxic water with absolutely no turbation, the exact opposite of conditions during a global flood. How in the hell would trackways form during "catastrophic transport"? As far as I know, animal trackways generally don't form during a massive flood. The Coconino sandstone was formed from a sandy desert. Why do they expect to find plants in a fucking desert?

13

Thick, tightly bent strata without sign of melting or fracturing. E.g. the Kaibab upwarpimg in Grand Canyon indicates rapid folding before the sediments had time to solidify (the sand grains were not elongated under stress as would be expected if the rock had hardened). This wipes out hundreds of millions of years of time and is consistent with extremely rapid formation during the biblical Flood. See Warped earthimg (written by a geophysicist).

This is the made-up creationist objection called soft-sediment deformation. (Which bears no relation to what real geologists call soft-sediment deformation.) They don't get that, over millions of years rather than thousands, "solid rock" really can warp and fold. We have a shit-ton of examples. Objecting "but the sand wasn't warped!" is nonsensical. It's a 400 km long geological structure uplifted 1.6 km. The change in sand grains would be all but undetectable, and it's not as if they started round or cubical.

14

Polystrate fossils — tree trunks in coal (Auracaria spp. king billy pines, celery top pines, in southern hemisphere coalimg). There are also polystrate tree trunks in the Yellowstone fossilized forestsimg and Joggins, Nova Scotiaimg and in many other places. Polystrate fossilized lycopod trunks occur in northern hemisphere coalimg, again indicating rapid burial / formation of the organic material that became coal.

This is in fact well-understood. A tree becomes buried in a layer of soft sedimentary rock. As the wood decays, its cellular structure is replaced by minerals precipitated from percolating groundwater and it becomes petrified. These fossilizing minerals, however, are hard so that later, as the softer surrounding sedimentary rock wears away, it leaves a "petrified forest". Other sediments are then deposited around these fossilized trees and subsequently become layers of new rock over time. Voila! Fossil trees extending through layers dated tens or hundreds of thousands of years later than the dead trees.

15

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, coal forms quicklyimg; in weeks for brown coal to months for black coal. It does not need millions of years. Furthermore, long time periods could be an impediment to coal formation because of the increased likelihood of the permineralization of the wood, which would hinder coalification.

You can dig a hole in two minutes with a shovel, but that doesn't mean that all holes are two minutes old. Even assuming that coalification can occur rapidly under certain circumstances (volcanism mixing clays with organic matter in the correct proportion, then providing unvarying heat above the boiling point of water for many months), it cannot then be assumed that all coal formed by this particular method, which requires very specific conditions. Dating of the coal strata usually shows that they are hundreds of millions of years old.

16

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, oil forms quicklyimg; it does not need millions of years, consistent with an age of thousands of years.

Again, if oil can form quickly, it does not follow all of it must form quickly, and moreover it does not follow that there is some lower age limit for the Earth. And if you can really just make oil that easily, CMI can convert people by the miracle of fixing the energy crisis.

17

Experiments show that with conditions mimicking natural forces, opals form quicklyimg, in a matter of weeks, not millions of years, as had been claimed.

The linked article speaks of Len Cram, an opal expert who claims he can grow opals. It claims that Cram's opals have been examined by the CSIRO and found to be indistinguishable from natural opals. But Cram denies that any scientific analysis has been done of his opals, and specifically by neither the CSIRO nor the Gemological Institute of America. Nor has he revealed his method for others to check. The main issue, of course, is that although opals can form quickly, this in no way implies they formed recently — opals form at the same time as the sediments in which they are found, and the surrounding rocks are dated at 100-150 million years.

18

Evidence for rapid, catastrophic formation of coal bedsimg speaks against the hundreds of millions of years normally claimed for this, including Z-shaped seams that point to a single depositional event producing these layers.

The formation and distortion of coal seams is easily explained by accepted (slow) geological processes. See, e.g., Coal Geology by Larry Thomas, which explains coal seam folding. The linked article asserts that Noah's flood "would have uprooted the entire pre-Flood biosphere and buried it with huge quantities of sand and mud" and correctly states that "The coal seams occur within thick layers of clay, sand and basaltic lava, which together form a 700-metre (2,300-foot) sequence of rocks". But there are multiple seams interleaved by well defined layers of other materials which indicates that they have been formed by a cyclical process rather than a single event, yet "There has only ever been one global Flood". Any catastrophic mingling of vegetation, rock and water would — depending on the relative proportions — either have produced deposits resembling a giant "fruit cake", with ingredients more or less evenly distributed, or a single sequence of differentiated layer with the heaviest particles at the bottom and lighter vegetation near the top covered by the finest clay. It would not have produced "three groups of major coal seams, separated and underlain by clays and sands". In any case, possible fast seam formation would not preclude slow seam formation.

19

Evidence for rapid petrifaction of woodimg speaks against the need for long periods of time and is consistent with an age of thousands of years.

See #15. The provided evidence for rapid natural petrification consists mostly of anecdotes. The artificial "instant petrification" method is nothing like natural petrification and involves soaking the wood in hydrochloric acid and sodium metasilicate (which does not occur in nature) then baking in a furnace at 1400°C.

20

Clastic dykes and pipes (intrusion of sediment through overlying sedimentary rock) show that the overlying rock strata were still soft when it happened. This drastically compresses the time scale for the deposition of the penetrated rock strata. See, Walker, T., Fluidisation pipes: Evidence of large-scale watery catastropheimg, Journal of Creation (TJ) 14(3):8–9, 2000.

This is factually incorrect. A clastic dike, an intrusion of sediment into cracks in harder rock layers, does not imply the rock was intruded when it was soft, but that it cracked when it was hard, e.g. during an earthquake.. A clastic dike formed when rock was wet would be deformed, and not cracked.

21

Para(pseudo)conformities—where one rock stratum sits on top of another rock stratum but with supposedly millions of years of geological time missing, yet the contact plane lacks any significant erosion; that is, it is a "flat gap". E.g. Coconino sandstone / Hermit shale in the Grand Canyon (supposedly a 10 million year gap in time). The thick Schnebly Hill Formation (sandstone) lies between the Coconino and Hermit in central Arizona. See Austin, S.A., Grand Canyon, monument to catastrophe, ICR, Santee, CA, USA, 1994 and Snelling, A., The case of the "missing" geologic timeimg, Creation 14(3):31–35, 1992.

All of this is well understood in conventional geology. The sandstone of the Schnebly Hill formation eroded away in the Grand Canyon region, but not in Arizona. Both regions were subsequently covered with Hermit shale. The argument about the "flat gap" (lack of erosion on the contact surface) is based on the findings of a creationist expedition investigating Park Service signs, as well as quote mining. It has the same problems as #23. Furthermore, not all environments form new layers of sediment. In many places on Earth one can walk on ancient rock billions of years old. If such areas were subsequently covered by sediment, we would have a paraconformity.

22

The presence of ephemeral markings (raindrop marks, ripple marks, animal tracks) at the boundaries of paraconformities show that the upper rock layer has been deposited immediately after the lower one, eliminating many millions of "gap" time. See references in Para(pseudo)conformities.

True — these markings are preserved only by rare events such as lava flows, which explains their great rarity. Once again, the error is the assumption that rapidity of some depositions means rapidity of all depositions. Furthermore, one would expect a world-wide flood claimed to have been violent enough to erode almost all geological formations, including forming the Grand Canyon, to completely destroy any ephemeral markings.

23

Inter-tonguing of adjacent strata that are supposedly separated by millions of years also eliminates many millions of years of supposed geologic time. The case of the "missing" geologic timeimg; Mississippian and Cambrian strata interbedding: 200 million years hiatus in question, CRSQ 23(4):160–167.

The basic idea behind this claim is that strata from the Mississippian and the Cambrian lie "next" to each other in the Grand Canyon such that there is no obvious disruption. This would "prove" that there was no time gap between what geologist have found to be about a 200 million year time period. The biggest issue with this is that no one else has found this interbedding or lateral connection of layers. The only people reporting it are a single group of five creationist researchers who visited in 1986. Instead of using standard geologic procedures to identify which layers corresponded to which period, they used a Park Service sign, some hand lens, and coloration. Conventionally, scientists use an array or properties and instruments that examine the qualities of the rock, fossils in the rock, and chemical composition to assign periods to a layer. The creationist researchers did none of this. Most importantly, no-one else has been able to see this effect, or replicate the findings, in the nearly 35 years since this was originally published.

24

The lack of bioturbationimg (worm holes, root growth) at paraconformities (flat gaps) reinforces the lack of time involved where evolutionary geologists insert many millions of years to force the rocks to conform with the "given" timescale of billions of years.

The link does not mention bioturbation at paraconformities at all. Instead, it nitpicks an article in The Skeptic criticizing creationist interpretation of a landform in Australia. (Admittedly, the article does not appear to be perfect.) It mentions "vertical tree trunks" buried in sandstone, which the creationists themselves were forced to admit are actually unusual iron concretions. Even ignoring this, signs of bioturbation tend to be destroyed in the process of lithification — transformation of buried soil and sediments into rock. There is nothing surprising about this.

25

The almost complete lack of clearly recognizable soil layers anywhere in the geologic column. Geologists do claim to have found lots of "fossil" soils (paleosols), but these are quite different to soils today, lacking the features that characterize soil horizons; features that are used in classifying different soils. Every one that has been investigated thoroughly proves to lack the characteristics of proper soil. If "deep time" were correct, with hundreds of millions of years of abundant life on the earth, there should have been ample opportunities many times over for soil formation. See Klevberg, P. and Bandy, R., CRSQ 39:252–68; CRSQ 40:99–116, 2003; Walker, T., Paleosols: digging deeper buries "challenge" to Flood geologyimg, Journal of Creation 17(3):28–34, 2003.

You show them a fossilized soil. They say "no, definitely not a fossilized soil!" Then they proceed to invent several possible explanations based on flood geology just by looking at your 200 pixels wide photo. Meert has since responded to the linked article with a detailed rebuttal.

26

Limited extent of unconformities (unconformity: a surface of erosion that separates younger strata from older rocks). Surfaces erode quickly (e.g. Badlands, South Dakota), but there are very limited unconformities. There is the "great unconformity" at the base of the Grand Canyon, but otherwise there are supposedly ~300 million years of strata deposited on top without any significant unconformity. This is again consistent with a much shorter time of deposition of these strata. See Para(pseudo)conformities.

Badlands are places where soft sediments devoid of vegetation receive rare but intense rain showers, and have very high rates of erosion. They are not a typical landscape in this respect. The point of the rest of the argument is not clear enough to respond to. The link given in #21 contradicts the claim here of only one unconformity in the Grand Canyon — it accepts there are five of them.

27

The amount of salt in the world's oldest lake contradicts its supposed ageimg and suggests an age more consistent with its formation after Noah's Flood, which is consistent with a young age of the earth.

The author of the linked article is either too stupid to write and breathe, or lying. The paper he references says right there in the abstract that it's talking about the content of salt in the catchment of the lake (the entire land area which drains into the lake), not in the lake itself.

28

The discovery that underwater landslides ("turbidity currents") travelling at some 50 km/h can create huge areas of sediment in a matter of hours (Press, F., and Siever, R., Earth, 4th ed., Freeman & Co., NY, USA, 1986). Sediments thought to have formed slowly over eons of time are now becoming recognized as having formed extremely rapidly. See for example, A classic tillite reclassified as a submarine debris flowimg (Technical).

Assuming this means, per creationist theory, that the world was rapidly formed when an ocean appeared and started sweeping around sediment, underwater turbidity currents are most common in areas of seismic instability. This theory would imply that only parts of the world around tectonic plates would be formed, thus leaving massive holes in the Earth. These are not observed. Note that sediments laid down by turbidity currents are just older unconsolidated sediments that have been dislodged.

29

Flume tank research with sediment of different particle sizes show that layered rock strata that were thought to have formed over huge periods of time in lake beds actually formed very quickly. Even the precise layer thicknesses of rocks were duplicated after they were ground into their sedimentary particles and run through the flume. See Experiments in stratification of heterogeneous sand mixturesimg, Sedimentation Experiments: Nature finally catches up!img and Sandy Stripes Do many layers mean many years?img

I taked some sands, puted it in big tank, then I aded watur and stired in a speshal wai, and nao I has layurs! Kreationizms are proved! Rly! What u sai? My layurs are not like rock layurs in grounds? I do not heard u! U wagez warz on Kristianitiez!

30

Observed examples of rapid canyon formation; for example, Providence Canyonimg in southwest Georgia, Burlingame Canyonimg near Walla Walla, Washington, and Lower Loowit Canyon near Mount St Helens. The rapidity of the formation of these canyons, which look similar to other canyons that supposedly took many millions of years to form, brings into question the supposed age of the canyons that no one saw form.

Canyons can form rapidly, especially in the volcanic and alluvial deposits the article mentions; however, this does not mean that all canyons formed quickly, or recently. "Look similar" is not sufficient in geology, where just "looking" does not give enough information to understand the formation and physical properties of the soils and rocks in question.

31

Observed examples of rapid island formation and maturation, such as Surtseyimg, which confound the notion that such islands take long periods of time to form. See also, Tuluman—A Test of Timeimg.

Surtsey is a volcano; not all islands are volcanoes. Britain's path to islandhood involved a massive lake bursting its banks thousands of years ago, cutting away the chalk deposits linking it to Europe. Other islands such as Sri Lanka and Cuba were formed as rising sea levels isolated them from the mainland, and still others were formed by tectonic uplift as colliding continents pushed up the ocean floor.

32

Rate of erosion of coastlinesimg, horizontally. E.g. Beachy Head, UK, loses a metre of coast to the sea every six years.

Presumably this is meant to imply that if the earth were old, all land would have been eroded into the ocean by now. Land lost from coastlines, however, does not necessarily just disappear, but is often deposited somewhere else. For example, Rye, East Sussex, a town in the same county as Beachy Head, was once an important port but is now inland. Similarly, Cape Cod, which is entirely sand and gravel (a glacial moraine), sometimes loses substantial amounts of shoreline in places — while aggregating large amounts in other places. Likewise, land can rise above the ocean, e.g., Surtsey (which the article lists in #31), or land raised by tectonic plates colliding.

33

Rate of erosion of continents verticallyimg. See Creation 22(2):18–21.

Continents are not eroding uniformly, nor is erosion the only process taking place. The continents (or lithosphere) are composed of lighter materials than the underlying crust (the asthenosphere) and the lithosphere floats on the asthenosphere as icebergs float in water. This means that high peaks are matched by compensating deep roots — and this is verified by measurement of both gravitational anomalies and seismic waves. As the surface of the lithosphere is eroded, the continents readjust their buoyancy and rise. For example, southern Sweden and the area surrounding the Baltic Sea has been well-known to be rising since 1810.

34

Existence of significant flat plateaux that are "dated" at many millions of years oldimg ("elevated paleoplains"). An example is Kangaroo Islandimg (Australia). C.R. Twidale, a famous Australian physical geographer wrote: "the survival of these paleoforms is in some degree an embarrassment to all the commonly accepted models of landscape development." Twidale, C.R. On the survival of paleoforms, American Journal of Science 5(276):77–95, 1976 (quote on p. 81). See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve?img Impact 118, April 1983.

This is an example of quote mining: the author has misread the referenced paper and picked out a quote he thinks supports his position, but the source of the quote itself shows the author's claim to be incorrect. At no point does Twidale's paper suggest that the results of dating are in error. It recounts various theories of landscape development, points out that all of them fail to explain all observed features of paleoforms, and proposes an alternative model that does explain them. The author is using inadequacies in old theories mentioned by Twidale to suggest that the data itself is wrong, which is completely backwards. The conclusion says: "Even if the conclusions reached by many workers over the years are only partly correct, it is clear that remnants of paleoforms are an integral part of the modern land surface ... The hills are not everlasting as Jacob implied (Genesis, 49, 26), but they persist for much longer periods than has been generally conceded."

35

The recent and almost simultaneous origin of all major mountain ranges around the world: all "dated" at only 5 million years ago, whereas the continents have, it is claimed, been around for up to billions of years. See Baumgardner, J., Recent uplift of today's mountainsimg. Impact 381, March 2005.

The statement is completely incorrect. The Appalachians date back so far — 480 million years — that they pre-date the Atlantic Ocean. Rocks found in the Appalachians match those found in Scandinavia and Scotland. The Rocky Mountains are 55 million years old, the Himalayas started forming 50 million years ago. In any case, even if the claim were correct, 5 million years is over eight hundred times longer than the standard creationist time frame of 6,000 years.

36

Water gaps. These are gorges cut through mountain ranges where rivers run. They occur worldwide and are part of what evolutionary geologists call "discordant drainage systems". They are "discordant" because they don't fit the deep time belief system. The evidence fits them forming rapidly in a much younger age framework where the gorges were cut in the recessive stage / dispersive phase of the global Flood of Noah's day. See Oard, M., Do rivers erode through mountainsimg? Water gaps are strong evidence for the Genesis Flood, Creation 29(3):18–23, 2007.

There is no such thing as an "evolutionary geologist". What the fuck is that even supposed to mean. Perhaps "geologist who hasn't tied his brain into a Gordian knot with creationism." "Discordant" means that the course of the river does not match the arrangement of geological layers. It does not refer to some problem with deep time. Making up meanings for words is unconvincing. Water gaps are well understood: the river was there first, then the area underwent uplifting. Because the uplift process was much slower than erosion, the river cut through the mountain range as it rose. We know exactly how all this shit works. It's only a mystery to people who actively try really hard to be fucking ignorant. OH WAIT.

37

Erosion at Niagara Fallsimg and other such places is consistent with just a few thousand years since the biblical Flood. However, much of the Niagara Gorge likely formed very rapidly with the catastrophic drainage of glacial Lake Agassiz; see: Climate change, Niagara and catastropheimg.

Waterfalls are sites of rapid erosion and therefore highly dynamic. There is absolutely no reason to suppose any waterfall is as old as the Earth. Niagara Falls first formed at the end of the last ice age, 12,500 years ago. Fitting even this date into the young Earth timescale would require inventing flaws in radiometric dating. Wait, what is this ice-age of which you speak? There is no mention of it in your inerrant book of record, The Bible. Oh, you got that information from secular "historical" science, I see.

38

River delta growth rate is consistent with thousands of years since the biblical Flood, not vast periods of time. The argument goes back to Mark Twain. E.g. 1. Mississippi—Creation Research Quarterly (CRSQ) 9:96–114, 1992; CRSQ 14:77; CRSQ 25:121–123. E.g. 2 Tigris–Euphrates: CRSQ 14:87, 1977.

Deltas form at sea level, and the current sea level dates only from the end of the last ice age — that is, about eight to ten thousand years ago. And even then, deltas are extremely dynamic, and can grow (like the current Mississippi delta) over only a few centuries - hardly "vast periods of time". But the real cherry on the turd is citing Mark fucking Twain. Who would have ripped you lying fuckwits several new assholes if he'd learnt you were taking his name in vain like this.

39

Underfit streams. River valleys are too large for the streams they contain. Dury speaks of the "continent-wide distribution of underfit streams". Using channel meander characteristics, Dury concluded that past streams frequently had 20–60 times their current discharge. This means that the river valleys would have been carved very quickly, not slowly over eons of time. See Austin, S.A., Did landscapes evolve?img Impact 118, 1983.

This example turns out to be quote mining. In the 1950s, a misfit stream was thought to arise when the drainage area of a river was reduced. George H. Dury recognized that misfit streams are more common in some regions, and therefore cannot arise only by this mechanism, which would have no regional variation. This phenomenon is thought to be caused by climate change in the past, which reduced precipitation; indeed, other research by Dury provided important evidence that the climate of Europe and northern U.S. was once tropical and much more humid than today. None of his work provides any evidence for a young Earth.

40

Amount of salt in the seaimg. Even ignoring the effect of the biblical Flood and assuming zero starting salinity and all rates of input and removal so as to maximize the time taken to accumulate all the salt, the maximum age of the oceans, 62 million years, is less than 1/50 of the age evolutionists claim for the oceans. This suggests that the age of the earth is radically less also.

The rate of increase — and decrease — in salinity of the oceans has varied over time. When seawater is separated from the ocean itself, and subsequently evaporates (which happened to the entire Mediterranean Sea a few times), the salts ("evaporite") left behind are no longer in the ocean, and the evaporated fresh water eventually returns through rain. The author of the linked article here tries to model salt accumulation in the ocean with a simplistic linear equation, which is grossly inadequate and based on an incorrect uniformitarian assumption.

41

The amount of sediment on the sea floorsimg at current rates of land erosion would accumulate in just 12 million years; a blink of the eye compared to the supposed age of much of the ocean floor of up to 3 billion years. Furthermore, long-age geologists reckon that higher erosion rates applied in the past, which shortens the time frame. From a biblical point of view, at the end of Noah's Flood lots of sediment would have been added to the sea with the water coming off the unconsolidated land, making the amount of sediment perfectly consistent with a history of thousands of years.

The calculation arriving at 12 million years has been shown to be flawed and simplistic. It takes little account of subduction of the tectonic plates, and, in bringing ocean floor sediments into flood geology, exposes one of its major flaws: deposition via a single, global flood would have mixed the sediments into a single mélange of one type of sediment, with all sorts of rock and soil types jumbled together. The truth is that sediments vary in different parts of the world, with true mélanges occurring mostly in subduction zones. Note that the "12 million years" is itself very substantially greater than the Ussher value of 6,000 years.

42

Iron-manganese nodules (IMN) on the sea floors. The measured rates of growth of these nodules indicates an age of only thousands of years. Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.

This is completely head-trauma stupid. Manganese nodule growth is so incredibly slow that it takes several million years to form one centimeter — it's one of the slowest known geological phenomena. Fast-growing nodules happen where the water is foul with industrial waste. But the good thing? Lalomov's "nodules" are growing on man-made steel objects and leeching the iron from them.

43

The age of placer deposits (concentrations of heavy metals such as tin in modern sediments and consolidated sedimentary rocks). The measured rates of deposition indicate an age of thousands of years, not the assumed millions. See Lalomov, A.V., and Tabolitch, S.E., 2000. Age determination of coastal submarine placer, Val'cumey, northern Siberia. Journal of Creation (TJ) 14(3):83–90.

Lalomov is well documented as being a lying liar who lies. He inserts names of metals into quotes from other scientists, and cherry-picks only those placer deposits that fit his ideas. This is, of course, some of the best creationism has to offer.

44

Pressure in oil / gas wells indicate the recent origin of the oil and gas. If they were many millions of years old we would expect the pressures to equilibrate, even in low permeability rocks. "Experts in petroleum prospecting note the impossibility of creating an effective model given long and slow oil generation over millions of years (Petukhov, 2004). In their opinion, if models demand the standard multimillion-years geochronological scale, the best exploration strategy is to drill wells on a random grid." Lalomov, A.V., 2007. Mineral deposits as an example of geological rates. CRSQ 44(1):64–66.

It turns out that several meters of solid rock can and do hold the oil and gas in place at least as well as a few millimeters of steel. Who'd have fucking thunk? Petukhov is some sort of genius. Of course actual oil company experts, who are paid money for this stuff, recommend drilling on a random grid. That totally makes sense. You'll be unsurprised to know Petukhov is not actually any sort of petroleum expert, but a creationist writing in a creationist book ... and a proponent of abiotic oil.

45

Direct evidence that oil is forming todayimg in the Guaymas Basin and in Bass Straitimg is consistent with a young earth (although not necessary for a young earth).

The fact that oil is forming today means absolutely nothing with regards to the age of the Earth. People are still being born today, but this does not mean there was no Earth before the oldest living human was born. This overlaps with #16.

46

Rapid reversals in paleomagnetismimg undermine use of paleomagnetism in long ages dating of rocks and speak of rapid processes, compressing the long-age time scale enormously.

The author of the cited "rapid reversal" paper has stated that his work was misused, as his own estimated timescale for the "rapid" event he studied is several thousand years. Furthermore, the author of the linked creationist article argues that the simple explanation is that rapid reversals would be associated with the flood event — yet overlooks that the lava which was the subject of the research was actually extruded on dry land, not under water.

47

The pattern of magnetization in the magnetic stripes where magma is welling up at the mid-ocean trenches argues against the belief that reversals take many thousands of years and rather indicates rapid sea-floor spreading as well as rapid magnetic reversals, consistent with a young earth (Humphreys, D.R., Has the Earth’s magnetic field ever flipped? Creation Research Quarterly 25(3):130–137, 1988).

Humphreys' general theory, detailed in several papers, is that the geological record shows many extremely fast reversals, on the order of taking days to weeks, rather than the accepted minimum of many tens or hundreds of thousands of years. Later works show that he has misread data on fast (on the order of decades) fluctuations in the magnetic field as being fast reversals. See also #46, #49. The referenced paper is not readily available, though the abstractimg is available. Until we obtain the full paper, we can't comment on the specific paper.

48

Measured rates of stalactite and stalagmite growthimg in limestone caves are consistent with a young age of several thousand years. See also articles on limestone cave formationimg.

Stalactites and stalagmites result from the deposition of calcium carbonate by groundwater. The solubility of this mineral, which determines the rate at which these features can grow, depends on the water's carbon dioxide content. Since this has varied widely over geologic time and is now being altered by human activity, the rate currently observed cannot be expected to hold throughout the past. But even if this were true, the argument says nothing: the age of the earth is in no way limited by the time it takes a stalactite to form. It should be noted that the entire evidence for this claim is an anecdote from a travel magazine and four creationist publications.

49

The decay of the earth's magnetic fieldimg. Exponential decay is evident from measurements and is consistent with theory of free decay since creation, suggesting an age of the earth of only thousands of years. For further evidence that it follows exponential decay with a time constant of 1611 years (±10) see: Humphreys, R., Earth’s magnetic field is decaying steadily — with a little rythm [sic], CRSQ 47(3):193–201; 2011.

The Earth's magnetic field does not decay exponentially, but reverses direction from time to time. This is actually pointed out by the article's author in #46 and #47, so the author has contradicted himself. Geomagnetic reversal events can be as rapid as 50,000 years or as slow as several million years apart. During the period between shifts, the magnetic field will decay. After a very, very long time of this it will flip. In fact, we have evidence of magnetic reversals going as far back as the Ordovician (485 to 463 million years ago).

50

Excess heat flow from the earth is consistent with a young age rather than billions of years, even taking into account heat from radioactive decay. See Woodmorappe, J., 1999. Lord Kelvin revisited on the young age of the earthimg. Journal of Creation (TJ) 13(1):14, 1999.

This point does not contain any argument, only creationist butthurt that somebody used the known age of the Earth to deduce something about the sources of geothermal heat. HOW DARE THEY.

Radiometric dating

51

Carbon-14 in coal suggests ages of thousands of years and clearly contradict ages of millions of years.

Carbon-14 in coal deposits comes from uranium producing occasional neutrons, which occasionally turn nitrogen-14 into carbon-14. We understand this process completely. But the author is so dead certain he's onto a winner he posts the same thing no less than four times in a row, filled with the righteous justice of the Dunning-Kruger poster child.

52

Carbon-14 in oilimg again suggests ages of thousands, not millions, of years.

As per #51. Repetition is how you fill out a Gish gallop.

53

Carbon-14 in fossil woodimg also indicates ages of thousands, not millions, of years.

As per #51 and #52. Bored yet?

54

Carbon-14 in diamondsimg suggests ages of thousands, not billions, of years.

As per #51, #52 and #53. But this is actually even stupider, because diamonds aren't made from atmospheric carbon, so you don't even start with the same ratio of C-14. And it's stupidest because the article claims 55,700 years for the diamonds, trashing Ussher's 6,000. Well fucking done.

55

Incongruent radioisotope dates using the same technique argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years.

The citation given is a chapter of a creationist book which itself says carbon-14 dating is unreliable past 35-45 thousand years, due to that being the upper limit of the test. Anything older will return a result of "35-45 thousand years or older". Furthermore, the book criticizes dates obtained using argon–argon dating (where Ar-40 is compared to Ar-39). This method is sensitive to loss of argon from the rock, for example through weathering, which leads to apparent ages older than in reality, just as described in the chapter.

56

Incongruent radioisotope dates using different techniques argue against trusting the dating methods that give millions of years.

This is #55 with the same reference and one word changed. Someone is already having trouble hitting 101.

57

Demonstrably non-radiogenic "isochrons" of radioactiveimg and non-radioactive elements undermine the assumptions behind isochron "dating" that gives billions of years. "False" isochronsimg are common.

The referenced paper does not actually demonstrate that isochrons are not radiogenic. It merely suggests that isochrons are a result of mixing between isotopically-light and isotopically-heavy sources of strontium, rather than a result of radioactive decay. The proposed source of this strontium is miraculous isotope separation in the mantle and meteorites. No evidence that such systems actually exist is presented, nor have the postulated strontium sources been found. The author of this conjecture is John Woodmorappe, author of Noah's Ark: A feasibility study.

58

Different faces of the same zircon crystal and different zircons from the same rockimg giving different "ages" undermine all "dates" obtained from zircons.

The linked article demonstrates that showing scientific papers to creationists is like showing a dog a card trick. The first paper criticised is about the dating of zircon grains in Australia. The author of the linked article complains that the oldest obtained age was reported instead of taking an average, completely failing to understand that the dating method used gives minimum estimates of age, so obviously the oldest value is a better estimate of true age than an average of minima. Moreover, he does not mention that the dates obtained from 17 different grains vary only slightly. The second paper criticised describes diamonds from Zaire with abnormal argon content that results in a bogus K-Ar dating result of 6 billion years. Here the contention is that the age of the diamonds was rejected due to dogma, which demonstrates a failure to comprehend the concept of outliers.

59

Evidence of a period of rapid radioactive decay in the recent pastimg (lead and helium concentrations and diffusion rates in zircons) point to a young earth explanation.

This claim is refuted, in excruciating detail, at the talk.origins archive. Basically, Humphreys gathered some shabbily acquired, faulty data, combined this with a deeply flawed model of helium diffusion in zircons, and claimed it proved young earth creationism. His claim was then thoroughly discredited — by old Earth creationist Gary H. Loechelt. (This one was so egregious a lie we didn't even have to change the wording of the original refutation.)

60

The amount of helium, a product of alpha-decay of radioactive elements, retained in zircons in granite is consistent with an age of 6,000±2000 years, not the supposed billions of years. See: Humphreys, D.R., Young helium diffusion age of zircons supports accelerated nuclear decay, in Vardiman, Snelling, and Chaffin (eds.), Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth: Results of a Young Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Institute for Creation Research and Creation Research Society, 848 pp., 2005

This refers to the same work as #59. The authors of these articles have failed to consider the full implications of their hypothesis that radioactive decay was much faster in the past. If all past decay happened in just 4540 years instead of 4.54 billion years, the released heat would provide 50 times more power per unit of Earth's surface than the Sun in zenith, and the background radiation dose at the end of the accelerated decay period would have been around 2000 Sv per year, or more than one lethal dose per day. How would anything have survived such conditions? Well...

61

Lead in zircons from deep drill cores vs. shallow ones. They are similar, but there should be less in the deep ones due to the higher heat causing higher diffusion rates over the usual long ages supposed. If the ages are thousands of years, there would not be expected to be much difference, which is the case (Gentry, R., et al., Differential lead retention in zircons: Implications for nuclear waste containment, Science 216(4543):296–298, 1982; DOI: 10.1126/science.216.4543.296).

The calculations used to arrive at this conclusion are numerically illiterate. An estimate done by people who can fucking count gives dates tens of millions of years older.

62

Pleochroic halos produced in granite by concentrated specks of short half-life elements such as polonium suggest a period of rapid nuclear decay of the long half-life parent isotopes during the formation of the rocks and rapid formation of the rocks, both of which speak against the usual ideas of geological deep time. See, Radiohalos: Startling evidence of catastrophic geologic processesimg, Creation 28(2):46–50, 2006.

"Polonium halos" are completely made-up creationist bullshit. There is no such thing.

63

Squashed pleochroic halosimg (radiohalos) formed from decay of polonium, a very short half-life element, in coalified wood from several geological eras suggest rapid formation of all the layers about the same time, in the same process, consistent with the biblical "young" earth model rather than the millions of years claimed for these events.

Duplicate of #62. Apparently, eating your own poo is better if you do it twice.

64

Australia's "Burning Mountain"img speaks against radiometric dating and the millions of years belief system (according to radiometric dating of the lava intrusion that set the coal alight, the coal in the burning mountain has been burning for ~40 million years, but clearly this is not feasible).

There is fairly clear evidence — presented in the linked article — that the Burning Mountain coal seam was ignited around 6,000 years ago, so it couldn't have been ignited by the 40 million years old lava intrusion. Moreover a lava intrusion cannot ignite coal while it is still underground, because there is no oxygen in which it could burn. The author essentially says that he can't believe that any of the known natural origins of coal seam fires (e.g., lightning, forest fire, spontaneous ignition) could have started the fire, so it must have been the lava, and therefore radiometric dating is wrong. This is a combination of an argument from incredulity and a straw man.

Astronomical evidence

65

Evidence of recent volcanic activity on Earth's moon is inconsistent with its supposed vast age because it should have long since cooled if it were billions of years old. See: Transient lunar phenomena: a permanent problem for evolutionary models of Moon formation and Walker, T., and Catchpoole, D., Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframeimg, Creation 31(3):18, 2009. See further corroboration: “At Long Last, Moon’s Core ‘Seen’”; http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/01/at-long-last-moons-core-seen.html?rss=1

Every transient lunar phenomena ever looked into has turned out to be somewhere between optical illusion and made-up bullshit. All of them. This is like appealing to UFOs. The "recent" activity described in the second link is not 6,000 years, but 2.5 billion years, or according to other sources from one billion years, to a few million years. They're more "recent" than the previous figure of three billion years. It turns out that creationist sources are full of blatant lies and bullshit. The last link describes seismic evidence that the Moon has a slightly molten core. How the fuck this constitutes evidence for a young universe is not entirely clear.

66

Recession of the moon from the earthimg. Tidal friction causes the moon to recede from the earth at 4 cm per year. It would have been greater in the past when the moon and earth were closer together. The moon and earth would have been in catastrophic proximity (Roche limit) at less than a quarter of their supposed age.

Using a linear equation to model Moon recession is too simplistic to give anything even close to correct results. Moving a satellite into a higher orbit, or away from the primary object, requires energy input. Recession of the Moon is caused by tidal friction, which converts the rotational energy of the Earth into the potential energy of the Moon, and tidal friction in turn depends on the layout of the continents, which was different in the past. Evidence from tidal rhythmites — sediment deposits that show a thinly layered structure with each layer corresponding to one Moon orbit, similar to tree rings — indicates that 2.45 billion years ago the Moon was just 10% closer to the Earth than at present. Perhaps the author would like to justify why the recession is linear with the knowledge he has from intelligent falling?

67

Slowing down of the earth. Tidal dissipation rate of Earth's angular momentum: increasing length of day, currently by 0.002 seconds/day every century (thus an impossibly short day billions of years ago and a very slow day shortly after accretion and before the postulated giant impact to form the Moon). See: How long has the moon been receding?img

Since the day length is connected with the Moon recession discussed in #66, a linear equation is too simplistic to model this case as well. Note also how, as one could expect from someone as dishonest as a Fundie, the author dismisses uniformitarianism for phenomena such as radioactive decay, for which no mechanisms of rate change are known, yet insists on using uniformitarian assumptions in places where they are clearly wrong and there are obvious mechanisms for rate changes. The evidence listed in #66 from tidal rhythmites suggests that 2.45 billion years ago the day was 17.1-18.9 hours long.

68

Ghost craters on the moon's maria (singular mare: dark "seas" formed from massive lava flows) are a problem for long ages. Evolutionists believe that the lava flows were caused by enormous impacts, and this lava partly buried other, smaller, impact craters within the larger craters, leaving "ghosts". But this means that the smaller impacts can't have been too long after the huge ones, otherwise the lava would have hardened before the impacts. This suggests a very narrow time frame for lunar cratering, and by implication the other cratered bodies of our solar system. They suggest that the cratering occurred quite quickly. See Fryman, H., Ghost craters in the sky, Creation Matters 4(1):6, 1999; A biblically based cratering theoryimg (Faulkner); Lunar volcanoes rock long-age timeframeimg.

This description of ghost crater formation is a straw man, oversimplified to the point of being completely made-up incoherent bullshit. And if this idiot claims to have not heard of the Late Heavy Bombardment (massive meteor impacts over a very narrow time frame of 300 mya) he's lying. The last link about supposed lunar volcanoes is a duplicate of the second link in #65 and looks thrown in to fill space. "And, and, VOLCANOES!! Ergo Jesus." Of course the Fundies spotting "evolutionists" pretty much everywhere, even on fields as removed of biology as geology of the Moon (ie, selenology) could not be absent.

69

The presence of a significant magnetic field around Mercuryimg is not consistent with its supposed age of billions of years. A planet so small should have cooled down enough so any liquid core would solidify, preventing the evolutionists' "dynamo" mechanism. See also, Humphreys, D.R., Mercury's magnetic field is young!img Journal of Creation 22(3):8–9, 2008.

Space probes sent to Mercury have observed tiny changes in its rate of rotation, and proven beyond reasonable doubt that it has a molten core. The postulated explanations are a high sulfur content in the core, which would lower its melting point, and the high eccentricity of the planet's orbit together to its closeness to the Sun, causing tidal heating. Mercury's core is 42% of its volume, compared to 17% for Earth; even this generates a magnetic field only 1% of Earth's. Humphreys' own model postulates that the field arises due to a decaying electrical current running through the core of Mercury, said current having been started by God as a miracle. However, such a current would dissipate in minutes, not the postulated 6,000 years, unless the core was superconducting — an absurdity given the temperatures on and inside Mercury. It is also unclear what place a claim of miraculous intervention, that would invalidate physics, has in a list of arguments that claims to be consistent with science. It's also unclear why has to be the Christian God the responsable of it. As usual planetary geologists are also included among the "evolutionists". What a moron.

70

The outer planets Uranus and Neptune have magnetic fields, but they should be long "dead" if they are as old as claimed according to evolutionary long-age beliefs. Assuming a solar system age of thousands of years, physicist Russell Humphreys successfully predicted the strengths of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptuneimg.

The link given is a duplicate of point #49. Again, the article posits an incorrect uniformitarian assumption of an exponentially decaying magnetic field that contradicts the author's own argument in #46, which is quite telling of the credibility of this waste of electrons. The mechanism of magnetic field generation on Neptune and Uranus is considered to be substantially different to that of Earth. Simulations support the notion that the field is generated by a thin convecting layer of fluid that surrounds a stable, stratified interior. Yet another example of a Fundie spotting evolution in the biological sense where it does not belong.

71

Jupiter's larger moons, Ganymede, Io, and Europa, have magnetic fieldsimg, which they should not have if they were billions of years old, because they have solid cores and so no dynamo could generate the magnetic fields. This is consistent with creationist Humphreys' predictions. See also, Spencer, W., Ganymede: the surprisingly magnetic moonimg, Journal of Creation 23(1):8–9, 2009.

This is completely and stupidly wrong. Ganymede has its own magnetic field, Io doesn't have one at all and Europa's is induced by Jupiter. Humphreys' speculations on electromagnetism are consistent with huffing gasoline.

72

Volcanically active moons of Jupiter (Ioimg) are consistent with youthfulness (Galileo mission recorded 80 active volcanoes). If Io had been erupting over 4.5 billion years at even 10% of its current rate, it would have erupted its entire mass 40 times. Io looks like a young moon and does not fit with the supposed billions of year's age for the solar system. Gravitational tugging from Jupiter and other moons accounts for only some of the excess heat produced.

It is widely accepted that the volcanism on Io arises through tidal heating. Because Io is subjected to gravitational forces from Jupiter and three of its large moons, Europa, Callisto and Ganymede, its crust is flexed in an irregular pattern, with the tidal bulges being up to 100 meters high. This generates tremendous amounts of heat — around 2.5 W/m2, or 50 times Earth's geothermal heat flux of 0.05 W/m2 — to power its volcanoes. Note also that the age of Io is unknown, so there is little basis for using a date of 4.5 billion years. It could well have been captured later. Another issue is that while some of the matter expelled by Io's volcanoes goes to space, a whole lot more falls back to it, just to be possibly erupted again and again. It loses mass, yes, but very slowly and not at the extremes this ignorant dumbfuck claims.

73

The surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. Studies of the few craters indicated that up to 95% of small craters, and many medium-sized ones, are formed from debris thrown up by larger impacts. This means that there have been far fewer impacts than had been thought in the solar system and the age of other objects in the solar system, derived from cratering levels, have to be reduced drastically (see Psarris, Spike, What you aren't being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD, available from CMI).

Europa's outer crust is ice and very active, as shown by the large fractures on its surface. Only large, recent craters and their effects would have a chance of remaining visible any large amount of time. Moreover, this argument contradicts the article's basic thesis: If there have been far fewer impacts (the cratering rate was lower), then the ages of heavily cratered bodies such as Mercury and the Moon have to be increased. The author (surprise, surprise!) contradicts himself by claiming that the cratering rate was much higher (point #68) and much lower (this one) at the same time.

74

Methane on Titanimg (Saturn's largest moon)—the methane should all be gone because of UV-induced breakdown. The products of photolysis should also have produced a huge sea of ethane. As the original Astrobiology paper said, “If the chemistry on Titan has gone on in steady-state over the age of the solar system, then we would predict that a layer of ethane 300 to 600 meters thick should be deposited on the surface.” No such sea is seen, which is consistent with Titan being a tiny fraction of the claimed age of the solar system.

While interesting, this is reasoning ahead of the evidence. The most likely explanation is that Titan's atmospheric methane is replenished from underground repositories. This explanation is supported by observations made by Cassini that detected surface carbon dioxide, which indicates outgassing from the core. As for ethane, the Cassini probe has in fact found considerable ethane forming vast liquid ethane seas and lakes, while vastly more forms an ethane "mist." We can show through simple arithmetic that the 6,000 year time scale is far short of that required to produce all the observed ethane on Titan. Given the current best estimates of the rate of photodisassociation of methane on Titan 4×10−12 Kg per M2 per second, and given the generous (and obviously wrong) assumption that the entire surface area of Titan is insolated year round, we can come up with a ceiling of 6.28×1013 Kg of methane disassociated in the history of Titan, of which ~12.5% would have been lost as hydrogen gas. This gives us, at very most, 5.52×1013 Kg of ethane. Assuming a liquid density in the region of 520 Kg per cubic metre, we would expect no more than 1.06×1011 cubic metres of ethane on Titan. This means that the so far observed seas and lakes on Titan (with only 30% of the surface surveyed) could only be on average 0.2 cm in depth at best, which we know is wrong since most of them don't return a radar signature, indicating they are more than 10 metres deep. This also excludes the vast reservoir of aerosol ethane in the atmosphere, which is in fact observed. Unlike those to creationist sites, the Astrobiology link is broken; it is not clear what paper the author is referring to and in any case it's highly likely it will have been misinterpreted by him.

75

The rate of change / disappearance of Saturn's rings is inconsistent with their supposed vast ageimg; they speak of youthfulness.

This links to another extensive list similar to this one, which uses considerable misunderstood quote mining. Instead of refuting each point individually, here is a short explanation. The age of a gas giant is not necessarily related to the ages of its rings. A planetary ring can originate in one of two ways: The protoplanetary dust left over after a planet's formation is within the Roche limit, the minimum distance below which an object held together only by its gravity will disintegrate due to tidal forces. This will stop it consolidating into a moon. A previously captured rubble-pile asteroid orbit decays within the Roche limit. If the asteroid is below the synchronous orbit radius, e.g., orbiting faster than the planet's rotation, tidal friction will cause it slow down further, and pass through the Roche Limit. This is also the case for retrograde orbits (opposite to the planet's rotation). This way, an old planet can have young rings. Small moons can survive within the Roche Limit if they are held together by tensile strength and not just their gravity. Orbital resonances and collisions with those moons, known as shepherd moons, cause the rings to maintain sharp edges and gaps. Observations from the Cassini probe made in 2007 suggest that while the rings of Saturn are a dynamic structure, they are likely as old as the Solar System — 4.5 billion years — and so were formed with Saturn itself.. Much later and better measurements, taken during the final part of Cassini's mission -may Space guard its memory forever-, show them to be young... in astronomical terms (from 10 to 100 million years), and further research suggests they will disappear within some hundreds of millions of years at best, which is way older than those 6,000-10,000 years.

76

Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, looks young. Astronomers working in the "billions of years" mindset thought that this moon would be cold and dead, but it is a very active moon, spewing massive jets of water vapour and icy particles into space at supersonic speeds, consistent with a much younger age. Calculations show that the interior would have frozen solid after 30 million years (less than 1% of its supposed age); tidal friction from Saturn does not explain its youthful activity (Psarris, Spike, What you aren't being told about astronomy, volume 1: Our created solar system DVD; Walker, T., 2009. Enceladus: Saturn's sprightly moon looks young, Creation 31(3):54–55).

The origin of extra heat emanating from Enceladus is indeed a subject of current research in planetary science. This is not surprising, because the Cassini probe approached it for the first time in 2005 and there's a lot of data from further flybys waiting to be studied. The conventional tidal heating mechanism, known from Io (per #72), explains only a small part of the heat. Various other mechanisms were proposed, including enhanced heating through orbital resonances in the past, but most were found to be inadequate. The missing heat is rather small on planetary scales (6 gigawatts), and equivalent to the thermal output of a large coal power plant. The author's proposed age of 30 million years is an argument against a 6,000-year timescale. The difference in behavior between the sides of the debate is illustrative. The scientists are actively working to arrive at an explanation and critically evaluate each other's hypotheses, while the creationist authors here make no attempt to explain anything, and only go back to the myth, and more exactly just one of the countless myths around. In this case, their only argument rests on a false dichotomy between the current state of science and biblical literalism. See also God of the gaps.

77

Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, should have been long since dead, if billions of years old, but its extreme surface features suggest otherwise. See Revelations in the solar systemimg.

The genesis of the surface features of Miranda is not fully understood. Proposed explanations involve tidal heating and repeated shattering by large impacts. Notably, the surface is a mix of apparently ancient and young regions. Just as with Enceladus in #76, the existence of open questions in science does not prove that creationism, much less the flavour defended by Fundies as the author of this mess, must therefore be correct.

78

Neptune should be long since "cold", lacking strong wind movement if it were billions of years old, yet Voyager II in 1989 found it to be otherwise — it has the fastest winds in the entire solar system. This observation is consistent with a young age, not billions of years. See Neptune: monument to creationimg.

Contrary to what the author asserts, large quantities of latent geothermal heat would not explain the strong winds. The current scientific hypothesis, based on simulations, is that the winds are caused by a combination of deep convection and conservation of angular momentum. However, the matter is not settled, notably because the model might not agree with the one proposed to explain the magnetic field in #70 and just one probe (Voyager 2) has explored that planet. The linked article also makes a claim similar to #91 for Neptune. Well, at least they retain the satanic heathen accepted Western names of Solar System planets. Could be worse.

79

Neptune's rings have thick regions and thin regions. This unevenness means they cannot be billions of years old, since collisions of the ring objects would eventually make the ring very uniform. Revelations in the solar systemimg.

This appears to refer to the arcs of the Adams ring, which under normal circumstances should dissipate and the ring should become uniform. It is thought that the arcs arise due to interactions of the dust particles with the moon Galatea. See also #75 plus more impartial sources than creationist ones.

80

Young surface age of Neptune's moon, Triton — less than 10 million years, even with evolutionary assumptions on rates of impacts (see Schenk, P.M., and Zahnle, K. On the Negligible Surface Age of Triton, Icarus 192(1):135–149, 2007. <doi:10.1016/j.icarus.2007.07.004>.

Triton is geologically active and its surface is constantly changing. There is no reason to expect that the analysis of craters will give a good estimate of its age. In the real world (ie: not in Fundieland), there is no such thing as "evolutionary assumptions on rates of impact". Astrogeology and biological evolution have nothing to do with each other, and only clueless people as the author of this monstrosity can identify both. And once again, 10 million years is an argument against a young universe.

.

81

Uranus and Neptune both have magnetic fields significantly off-axis, which is an unstable situation. When this was discovered with Uranus, it was assumed by evolutionary astronomers that Uranus must have just happened to be going through a magnetic field reversal. However, when a similar thing was found with Neptune, this AD hoc explanation was upset. These observations are consistent with ages of thousands of yearsimg rather than billions.

It is not stated how the fields would be consistent with a young universe, nor is an alternative proposed mechanism of magnetic field generation given. Again, there is no such fucking thing as an "evolutionary astronomer". The argument about the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune is a duplicate of point #70, and is discussed there. The link itself is duplicated from #78, which should not be surprising at all (filler is filler).

82

The orbit of Pluto is chaotic on a 20 million year time scale and affects the rest of the solar system, which would also become unstable on that time scale, suggesting that it must be much younger. (See: Rothman, T., God takes a nap, Scientific American 259(4):20, 1988).

"Chaotic" just means we can't predict it precisely, not that random bullshit can happen. It does not mean it falls out of the fucking sky. It's orbitally locked to Neptune, for fuck's sake. And what the fuck, a chaotic Pluto makes the rest of the solar system fall out of the sky? And just how the fuck does it do that? Did he grow a new arse to pull this one out of?

83

The existence of short-period cometsimg (orbital period less than 200 years), e.g. Halley, which have a life of less than 20,000 years, is consistent with an age of the solar system of less than 10,000 years. ad hoc hypotheses have to be invented to circumvent this evidence (see Kuiper Beltimg). See Comets and the age of the solar systemimg.

This is the second silliest argument on this list (but just wait till you get to #96). The Kuiper belt is not an "ad hoc hypothesis", it really exists and NASA has a spacecraft -"New Horizons"- exploring it. (Look, here's a picture of it!) And never mind he then uses the Kuiper Belt as an argument in #84, the next fucking point.

84

"Near-infrared spectra of the Kuiper Belt Object, Quaoar and the suspected Kuiper Belt Object, Charon, indicate both contain crystalline water ice and ammonia hydrate. This watery material cannot be much older than 10 million years, which is consistent with a young solar system, not one that is 5 billion years old." See: The "waters above"img.

They're made of water and ammonia ice, and all they need is a source of heat for cryovolcanism. The creationist hypothesis, which they proudly link as if it isn't incredibly fucking stupid, is that these objects are made of remnants of a "watery halo" that God created on Day 2 as "waters above" and which caused the global flood. 'Cos that totally beats physics. See also: lunar bukkake hypothesis. Oh wait, #83 dismisses the Kuiper Belt as an "ad hoc hypothesis". I guess the "waters above" idea is wrong too. Never mind. And 10 million years is not the same as 10,000 years. (Epic) fail again

85

Lifetime of long-period comets (orbital period greater than 200 years) that are sun-grazing comets or others like Hyakutake or Hale–Bopp means they could not have originated with the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. However, their existence is consistent with a young age for the solar system. Again an ad hoc Oort Cloudimg was invented to try to account for these comets still being present after billions of years. See, Comets and the age of the solar systemimg.

An argument which shares many problems with #83. The author is basing his claim of no evidence for the Oort on special pleading, by excluding the evidence from long-period comets. The cited article from Nature says that simulations of the formation of the Oort cloud indicate that it may contain less material that previously thought, which is a far cry from saying that the Oort cloud doesn't exist, but after 85 points full of bullshit it should be clear the way Fundie thinking schemes work. However, later work suggests that over 90% of material in the cloud might have been captured from other stars.

86

The maximum expected lifetime of near-earth asteroids is of the order of one million years, after which they collide with the sun. And the Yarkovsky effect moves main belt asteroids into near-earth orbits faster than had been thought. This brings into question the origin of asteroids with the formation of the solar system (the usual scenario), or the solar system is much younger than the 4.5 billion years claimed. Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006.

The author fucks himself again. The Yarkovsky effect is a difference in the emitted thermal radiation between the "dusk" and "dawn" sides of a rotating asteroid that causes changes to its orbit over the long term. Trouble is that for prograde asteroids, i.e. all but 36 of the 500,000 of them (and all of those outside the main belt), it pushes them away from the sun. The 1 million year age limit is completely pulled out of the author's anus, presumably by immaculate conception.

87

The lifetime of binary asteroids—where a tiny asteroid "moon" orbits a larger asteroid— in the main belt (they represent about 15–17% of the total): tidal effects limit the life of such binary systems to about 100,000 years. The difficulties in conceiving of any scenario for getting binaries to form in such numbers to keep up the population, led some astronomers to doubt their existence, but space probes confirmed it (Henry, J., The asteroid belt: indications of its youth, Creation Matters 11(2):2, 2006).

The current hypothesis is that binary asteroids are formed when fast rotation of an asteroid tears it apart into two new bodies — a process called rotational fission. The rate of rotation can be increased through the YORP effect, an effect related to the Yarkovsky effect discussed in the previous point, but acting on irregular surfaces and inhomogeneities in albedo. It gets boring to see just creationist sources referred.

88

The observed rapid rate of change in starsimg contradicts the vast ages assigned to stellar evolution. For example, Sakurai's Object in Sagittarius: in 1994, this star was most likely a white dwarf in the centre of a planetary nebula; by 1997 it had grown to a bright yellow giant, about 80 times wider than the sun (Astronomy & Astrophysics 321:L17, 1997). In 1998, it had expanded even further, to a red supergiant 150 times wider than the sun. But then it shrank just as quickly; by 2002 the star itself was invisible even to the most powerful optical telescopes, although it is detectable in the infrared, which shines through the dust (Muir, H., 2003, Back from the dead, New Scientist 177(2384):28–31).

Sakurai's Object is one of several observed "born again" (and certainly not in the Christian Evangelical sense) objects that are believed to be white dwarfs which undergo a second phase of swelling to become red giants. Its transient nature indicates its origins as a star which first became a white dwarf prior to its swan song. This is not a good argument for a young universe. He also ignores (it's clear why) that the very late stages of stellar evolution are very short by astronomical standards (thousands of years or even (much) less), this explaining why Sakurai's Object-like stars are so rare

89

The faint young sun paradox. According to stellar evolution theory, as the sun's core transforms from hydrogen to helium by means of nuclear fusion, the mean molecular weight increases, which would compress the sun's core increasing fusion rate. The upshot is that over several billion years, the sun ought to have brightened 40% since its formation and 25% since the appearance of life on earth. For the latter, this translates into a 16–18 °C temperature increase on the earth. The current average temperature is 15 °C, so the earth ought to have had a -2 °C or so temperature when life appeared. See: Faulkner, D., The young faint Sun paradox and the age of the solar systemimg, Journal of Creation (TJ) 15(2):3–4, 2001.

Insolation is not the only factor which determines the surface temperature of a planet, as we are discovering here on Earth. It is simply not possible to perform this sort of simplified extrapolation. The faint young Sun paradox also has a number of proposed solutions. Even if it were true that there was no solution, this claim still says nothing useful, e.g. at least one theory has it that life first formed around undersea geothermal vents, in which case insolation is totally irrelevant. The Sun having become 40% more luminous ("brightened" is inexact but let's excuse Uncle Fundie) since it was formed looks like a PIDOOMA, as serious studies think that amount was 30% (Fundies, these links do not bite. Really), which is enough to cause a difference

90

Evidence of (very) recent geological activity (tectonic movements) on the moon is inconsistent with its supposed age of billions of years and its hot origin. Watters, T.R., et al., Evidence of Recent Thrust Faulting on the Moon Revealed by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, Science 329(5994):936–940, 20 August 2010; DOI: 10.1126/science.1189590 (“This detection, coupled with the very young apparent age of the faults, suggests global late-stage contraction of the Moon.”) NASA pictures support biblical origin for Moonimg.

Duplicate of #65. But just dig the one this replaced.

91

The giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn radiate more energy than they receive from the sun, suggesting a recent origin. Jupiter radiates almost twice as much energy as it receives from the sun, indicating that it may be less than 1 % of the presumed 4.5 billion years old solar system. Saturn radiates nearly twice as much energy per unit mass as Jupiter. See The age of the Jovian planetsimg.

Jupiter generates significant quantities of internal heat through the well understood Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism., while Saturn uses the same plus the fall of helium droplets to its core. As a result of this heat radiation, Jupiter shrinks by 2 cm per year. Given that it is 2.5 times more massive than all the other planets put together, one can assume that it has been radiating more heat than it gets from the sun for a bit more than 6,000 years. Not to mention that if the Fundieland scenario was true Jupiter and Saturn would be much hotter and that "1% of the pressumed 4.5 billion years old solar system" is still 45 million years. Fail again

92

Speedy stars are consistent with a young age for the universe. For example, many stars in the dwarf galaxies in the Local Group are moving away from each other at speeds estimated at 10–12 km/s. At these speeds, the stars should have dispersed in 100 Ma, which, compared with the supposed 14,000 Ma age of the universe, is a short time. See Fast stars challenge big bang origin for dwarf galaxies.

These dwarf galaxies are several million light years away. That's just a bit fucking longer than 6,000 years. The 100 million year figure is also just a bit fucking longer than 6,000 years. By this point it looks like he was running out of ideas and just making up any old shit to fill space, even when it completely trashes his 6,000 year hypothesis. This section ends with four own goals in a row. The same own goal, repeated. It's like an amazing sculpture of fail, made from his own poo. Would you mind, by the way, to stop citing creationist sources and to use non-creationist ones?. Would you mind, too, to research what is dark matter or, if you feel edgy, alternative hypotheses as MOND theories?

93

The ageing of spiral galaxies (much less than 200 million years) is not consistent with their supposed age of many billions of years. The discovery of extremely "young" spiral galaxiesimg highlights the problem of this evidence for the evolutionary ages assumed.

Starlight problem, and hundreds of millions of years is just a bit fucking longer than 6,000 years. Again linking to creationist sources instead of non-creationist ones should give a hint about the null credibility of his sources. Again mixing biological evolution with non-biological one. Congratulations, this list is becoming 101 Epic Fails

94

The number of type I supernova remnantsimg (SNRs) observable in our galaxy is consistent with an age of thousands of years, not millions or billions. See Davies, K., Proc. 3rd ICC, pp. 175–184, 1994.

Every known supernova has been just a bit fucking further away than 6,000 light years., and also as time goes on the gases that form a supernova remnant are dispersed by its expansion to the point of said remnant disappearing. Not to mention that even the most massive stars need millions of years to reach the supernova stage and that white dwarfs, the stellar remnant left by less massive stars, that produce type Ia supernovae (will you bother to check what are you talking about before saying nonsense?), an even longer time to appear. The typical Creationist ignorance (either that or simply dishonesty, or both) is also present here, ignoring that supernova remnants expand and become undetectable precisely in that timeframe.

95

The rate of expansion and size of supernovas indicates that all studied are young (less than 10,000 years). See supernova remnantsimg.

This supernova is found in a distant galaxy some 380 million light years away. That means it happened 380 million years ago. But I'll link this again anyway.. Same as above: supernova remnants and other phenomena as planetary nebulae are young in astronomical terms because the gases that form them end up merging with the interstellar medium, with the final disappearance of said astronomical onjects. If you say something really fucking dumb that disproves your own argument four times in a row, does that count as support for it by repetition? 2+2+2+2=I EAT GLUE, ERGO JESUS. It's all so simple! But just wait, the next section makes this one look smart. Have a desk handy so you can bang your head on it.

Human history

96

Human population growth. Less than 0.5% p.a. growth from six people 4,500 years ago would produce today's population. Where are all the people?img if we have been here much longer?

This is actually the stupidest one in the list, even stupider than the Kuiper Belt one in #83. We can be certain that there were one hell of a lot more than six people 4,500 years ago, before or after the flood. 2500 BC is the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt which saw the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, which must therefore have survived the flood that carved out the Grand Canyon. There were well-documented civilizations all over the world. We have the records. World population figures obtained from such a model give interesting results when contrasted with well documented historical events. For example, half the people in the entire world would have to fight at the battle of Marathon, and immediately after the battle all of them (including the dead ones) would have to go all the way to Warring States period China to fight the other half of the population. Who says only Jesus revive dead people? This model assumes we have to do it early, do it often, and do it en masse. If he'd led off with this one, instead of burying it at the end, American Atheists would have been flooded with membership applications from suddenly-ex-YECs who'd read his article.

97

"Stone age" human skeletons and artefacts. There are not enough for 100,000 years of a human population of just one million, let alone more people (10 million?). See Where are all the people?img

This is fucking ridiculous. Fossilisation is rare, most people weren't buried in a way that preserved anything and they usually didn't have their stuff buried with them because stuff was really valuable back then. The link also talks about the soft dinosaur tissue rubbish from point #7 because an error doubled is an error ... doubled.

98

Length of recorded history. Origin of various civilizations, writing, etc., all about the same time several thousand years ago. See Evidence for a young worldimg.

"Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases. Why would he wait a thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history?" Because writing was invented when it became useful: art, then trade, then property records and law. So, in the creationist hypothesis, how come it took 2500 years from creation to Moses writing the Pentateuch in 1491 BC? (Which, by the way, he totally didn't.) Oh, and never mind the Chinese writing about themselves 1500 years before that date.

99

Languages. Similarities in languages claimed to be separated by many tens of thousands of years speaks against the supposed ages (e.g. compare some aboriginal languages in Australia with languages in south-eastern India and Sri Lanka). See The Tower of Babel account affirmed by linguisticsimg.

The linked article is completely made-up bullshit that its author thinks sounds plausible. Language evolution is not similar to biological evolution, and changes in language are not random. How this bears any relation to the age of the earth is made entirely of what the fuck.

100

Common cultural "myths" speak of recent separation of peoples around the world. An example of this is the frequency of stories of an earth-destroying floodimg.

It turns out that flood plains are really fertile and agriculture is a lot easier on the flat, which is why civilisations tend to start there. So they tell flood stories. AMAZINGLY ENOUGH. Must be a miracle.

101

Origin of agriculture. Secular dating puts it at about 10,000 years and yet that same chronology says that modern man has supposedly been around for at least 200,000 years. Surely someone would have worked out much sooner how to sow seeds of plants to produce food. See: Evidence for a young worldimg.

By this argument, we should be wondering why it took people so long to invent the aeroplane, space flight or the television. If we are to wonder why it takes time for people to invent things, then are they arguing that God created us already knowing all inventions there would ever be? This is an argument from incredulity. Farming requires the adoption of a lifestyle in which the farmer must learn to produce or trade for all the things he requires, to build and maintain irrigation systems, and to defend a permanent settlement. These innovations and the social structures needed to maintain them only seem obvious in hindsight. More importantly, almost all of the plants and animals that humans depend on do not exist in nature. It was only by ages of selective breeding that certain animals were made docile and certain plants made edible and nutritious (e.g., the banana). This is not to mention the fact that the last ice age ended 11,000 years ago, and it's fucking hard to convince your friends to stop hunting and try and start breeding these random foods when you're barely surviving in the first place. Other cultural advances that seem obvious to us today also have relatively late origins. For example, coinage replacing barter did not happen until 900BCE at the earliest, and the otherwise sophisticated Inca knew nothing of the wheel. When these people have to resort to arguments as bad as this one to defend their positions, something is really wrong.

Removed arguments

These arguments turned out to be too stupid even for them. Sadly, burying the evidence is harder with the Internet Archive around.

Introduction

In the end the Bible will stand vindicated and those who deny its testimony will be confounded. That same Bible also tells us of God's judgment on those who reject his right to rule over them. But it also tells us of his willingness to forgive us for our rebellious behaviour. The coming of Jesus Christ, who was intimately involved in the creation process at the beginning, into the world, has made this possible (see Good newsimg).

Because a resounding religious declaration (again, may Eris confound Fundies) plus the usual threats against unbelievers are totally the right thing for an article claiming to be about science. Sadly, his biblical scholarship is still for shit: John 1:1-3 is the start of a gospel but does not mention Jesus, and has its origins in the ancient Greek philosophical term Logos. The stuff Philo of Alexandria mixed in and John having been a Gnostic wrote down.

Former point 90

Cometesimals. From his studies, astronomer Louis Frank says that 100 million tonnes of water is being added to Earth every year in cometesimals (small comet remnants). This has strong implications for the supposed age of the oceans, if confirmed. See: Bergman, J., Advances in integrating cosmology: The case of cometesimals, Journal of Creation (CENTJ) 10(2):202–210, 1996.

This idiot pseudoscience was too stupid even to stay in this article. Louis A. Frank saw dark pixels in his post-processed satellite images and said they were "atmospheric holes". If we had 30,000 small comets disintegrating in the Earth's atmosphere every day, we'd have quite a light show every night.

Analysis

Many arguments on the list go like this:

• If the Earth is 6,000 years old, we expect X to be less than 6,000 years old.
• Under some circumstances, X can form in less than 6,000 years.
• Therefore, the Earth could be 6,000 years old. You can't prove it isn't true! So it totally is! Yeah! Check mate, “science”.

And a ton of assuming a false dilemma between science and YEC: either science can explain everything, or YEC is true. And ... a pile of example which are arguments against YEC. Again, well done.

There's also the classic syllogism:

1. Science relies on first-hand evidence.
2. Only God has first-hand evidence of creation.
3. Therefore the head of every evolutionist has just exploded.

Below is a breakdown of problems in the author's arguments. It does not exhaustively list all errors, this article would be even bloody longer.

Fallacies

• Absurd uniformitarian assumption: #32, #33, #40, #41, #48, #49, #66, #67, #69, #70, #74, #89, #96
• If the sky is blue, then all blue things must be the sky: #3, #4, #5, #6, #11, #15, #16, #29, #30, #31, #37, #38, #45, #88, #89, #99
• My massive intellect can't think of a way to do that, so it must be impossible: #64, #72, #87, #98, #101
• Denial: #3, #25, #35, #50, #96
• Either you're with me, or you're a communist: #1, #2, #65, #70, #76, #77, #78
• Miracles are totally a scientific argument: #58, #69, #84
• If two and two, therefore Tuesday: #62, #73, #82
• Pseudoscience and dubious science: #2, #7, #17, #19, #21, #23, #29, #44, #48, #57, #59, #60, #61, #62
• Quote mining: #21, #27, #34, #39, #43, #46, #65, #82
• But my case is special: #85, #100
• Refuting my made-up version of science: #4, #5, #9, #10, #20, #21, #36, #46, #51, #55, #58, #64, #65, #68, #71, #72, #80, #82, #90, #91, #99

Technical problems

• Oops, I contradicted myself: #21 and #26, #31 and #32, (#46, #47) and (#49, #69, #70), #68 and #73, #83 and #84
• Let me just say that again with slightly shuffled words: #52, #53, #54, #56, #60, #63, #81, #90
• Arguments against a young Earth: #35, #41, #54, #73, #76, #92, #93, #94, #95
• Mind-numbing stupidity that will make you want to set fire to the Internet: #1-#101

See also

• Barmyology
• Alcohol
• Assisted suicide