“Thousands Not Millions” Published by RATE Scientists after an 8 year Study on Young Earth Theory v. Evolution Theory

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Nuclear Decay: Evidence for a Young Earth

Recent experiments commissioned by the RATE project1 indicate that “1.5 billion years” worth of nuclear decay took place in one or more short episodes between 4,000 and 14,000 years ago. The results strongly support our accelerated decay hypothesis, that episodes with billion-fold speed-ups of nuclear decay occurred in the recent past, such as during the Genesis flood, the Fall of Adam, or early Creation week. Such accelerations would shrink the alleged 4.5 billion year radioisotope age of the earth down to the 6,000 years that a straightforward reading of the Bible gives.

Our experiments measured how rapidly nuclear-decay-generated helium escapes from tiny radioactive crystals in granite-like rock. The data show that most of the helium generated by nuclear decay would have escaped during the alleged 1.5 billion year uniformitarian2 age of the rock, and there would be very little helium in the crystals today. But the crystals still retain large amounts of helium, amounts our experiments show are entirely consistent with an age of only thousands of years. Thus these data are evidence against the long ages of evolutionism and for the recent creation in Scripture. Here are some details:

Much Helium Begins in Radioactive Crystals

The research story starts in the late 1970s at Fenton Hill in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, about twenty miles west of Los Alamos, just west of a large volcanic caldera. Geoscientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory were drilling (figure 1) several miles deep into the hot, dry granitic rock beneath the site to determine how suitable it would be as a geothermal energy source. They sent drill core samples to Oak Ridge National Laboratory for analysis.

At Oak Ridge, Robert Gentry, a creationist physicist, and his colleagues ground up the rock, extracting hard, dense, microscopic crystals called zircons (figure 2, page iii). The zircons, were, as usual, radioactive. Much of the uranium and thorium in the earth’s continental crust is in zircons, often imbedded in flakes of biotite, a black mica. The zircon-containing mica is scattered widely throughout the granitic rocks of the crust.

The radioactivity makes helium. As a uranium atom decays in many steps down to a lead atom, it emits eight alpha particles, each of which is a helium nucleus composed of two protons and two neutrons. For the crystal size we are concerned with, most of the emitted alpha particles stop within the zircon originating them. Then each alpha particle quickly gathers two electrons from the crystal and becomes a complete helium atom.

Much Helium Is Still in the Zircons

Helium is a lightweight, fast-moving, and “slippery” atom, not sticking chemically to other atoms. It can diffuse through solids relatively fast, meaning that helium atoms wiggle through the spaces between atoms in a crystal lattice. For the same reason it can leak rapidly through tiny holes and cracks, making it ideal for leak detection in laboratory vacuum systems. The rates are so great that those who believe in billions of years had expected most of the helium produced during the alleged long ages to have worked its way out of the crust and into the earth’s atmosphere.

But the helium is not in the earth’s atmosphere! When non-specialists hear that, they usually assume that helium has risen to the top of the atmosphere as it would in a balloon, and then that it has leaked from the top of the atmosphere into space. But unconfined helium spreads throughout the atmosphere from top to bottom, and the loss into space is actually quite small. Dr. Larry Vardiman, an ICR atmospheric scientist, has shown that even after accounting for the slow leakage into space, the earth’s atmosphere has only about 0.04% of the helium it should have if the earth were billions of years old.3

In 1957 Melvin Cook, a creationist chemist, pointed out this problem in the prestigious scientific journal, Nature, asking in his title, “Where is the earth’s radiogenic helium?”4 Radiogenic means, “generated by nuclear decay.” In nearly half a century, uniformitarian scientists apparently have not found a good enough answer to publish in Nature. But creationists have a simple answer: most of the helium has not entered the earth’s atmosphere. It is still in the earth’s crust and mantle. In fact, the Oak Ridge team found that much of it is still in the zircons! It has not even had enough time to leak out of the crystals where it originated.

Los Alamos measurements5 of uranium, thorium, and lead in the zircons imply “1.5 billion” years worth of nuclear decay—at today’s rates. Gentry et al. used the amounts of lead to calculate how much helium the decay had deposited in the zircons. Then they measured how much helium was still in the zircons. Comparing the two gave the percentage of helium still retained in the zircons, which they published in 1982.6

Their results were remarkable. Up to 58 percent of the radiogenic helium had not diffused out of the zircons. The percentages decreased with increasing depth and temperature in the borehole. That confirms diffusion had been happening, because the rate of diffusion in any material increases strongly with temperature. Also, the smaller the crystal, the less helium should be retained. These zircons were both tiny and hot, yet they had retained huge amounts of helium!

Experiments and Theory Needed

Many creationists, knowing how fast helium diffuses in many materials, believed it would be impossible for that much helium to remain in the zircons after 1.5 billion years. But we had no specific data to support our belief. As of 2000 the only reported helium diffusion data for zircons7 were ambiguous, and none existed at all for biotite. So the RATE project commissioned experiments to measure helium diffusion in zircon and biotite samples specifically from the Fenton Hill borehole.

We also needed theoretical models to interpret the data. Thinking biotite was the main restriction, we published8 two models showing the biotite diffusion rates required to make the zircons retain the observed amounts of helium at the observed borehole temperatures for a specified time. The “Evolution” model assumed the time was 1.5 billion years, with continuous production of helium during the whole period. The “Creation” model assumed the time was 6,000 years, with most of the helium produced in one or more bursts of accelerated nuclear decay near the beginning of that time.

RATE Experiments Show How Fast Helium Escapes

Our experiments showed that we need to account for both diffusion from zircon and biotite, but zircon is more important. The resulting new “Creation” model differs by less than 0.05% from the previous one. The “Evolution” model did not change. So the numbers in our first models are still valid, but they now apply to zircon instead of biotite.

Our zircon data agree with recently published data from another site,9 and both agree with our “Creation” model. The data allow us to calculate how long diffusion has been taking place—between 4,000 and 14,000 years! The diffusion rates are nearly 100,000 times higher than the maximum rates the “Evolution” model could allow. That leaves no hope for the 1.5 billion years. For most of that alleged time, the zircons would have to have been as cold as liquid nitrogen (196ºC below zero) to retain the observed amount of helium. Such a “cryogenic Earth” model would not help uniformitarians, because it would violate uniformitarianism!

Three of my colleagues and I10 on the RATE project are preparing a paper with full technical details which we hope to present at the International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh next summer. In the meantime, friends and supporters of the RATE project have good reason to rejoice with us over these preliminary results, which strongly uphold the 6,000-year timescale of Scripture.

Potassium-Argon and Argon-Argon Dating of Crustal Rocks and the Problem of Excess Argon

According to the assumptions foundational to potassium-argon (K-Ar) and argon-argon (Ar-Ar) dating of rocks, there should not be any daughter radiogenic argon (40Ar*) in rocks when they form. When measured, all 40Ar* in a rock is assumed to have been produced by in situ radioactive decay of 40K within the rock since it formed. However, it is well established that volcanic rocks (e.g. basalt) contain excess 40Ar*, that is, 40Ar which cannot be attributed to either atmospheric contamination or in situ radioactive decay of 40K.1 This excess 40Ar* represents primordial Ar carried from source areas in the earth’s mantle by the parent magmas, is inherited by the resultant volcanic rocks, and thus has no age significance.

However, are all other rocks in the earth’s crust also susceptible to “contamination” by excess 40Ar*emanating from the mantle? If so, then the K-Ar and Ar-Ar “dating” of crustal rocks would be similarly questionable.

When muscovite (a common mineral in crustal rocks) is heated to 740°-860°C under high Ar pressures for periods of 3 to 10.5 hours it absorbs significant quantities of Ar, producing K-Ar “ages” of up to 5 billion years, and the absorbed Ar is indistinguishable from radiogenic argon (40Ar*).2 In other experiments muscovite was synthesized from a colloidal gel under similar temperatures and Ar pressures, the resultant muscovite retaining up to 0.5 wt% Ar at 640°C and a vapor pressure of 4,000 atmospheres.3 This is approximately 2,500 times as much Ar as is found in natural muscovite. Thus under certain conditions Ar can be incorporated into minerals which are supposed to exclude Ar when they crystallize.

Patterson et al. envisage noble gases from the mantle (and the atmosphere) migrating and circulating through the crust, so there should be evidence of excess 40Ar* in crustal rocks.4 Noble gases in CO2-rich natural gas wells confirm such migration and circulation—the isotopic signatures clearly indicate a mantle origin for the noble gases, including amounts of excess 40Ar* in some CO2-rich natural gas wells exceeding those in mantle-derived mid-ocean ridge basalts.5 In fact, the quantities of excess 40Ar* in the continental crust can be as much as five times that found in such mantle-derived mid-ocean ridge basalts, strongly implying that excess 40Ar* in crustal rocks and their constituent minerals could well be the norm rather than the exception.

Dalrymple, referring to metamorphism and melting of rocks in the crust, has commented: “If the rock is heated or melted at some later time, then some or all the 40Ar may escape and the K-Ar clock is partially or totally reset.”6 Thus 40Ar* escapes to migrate in the crust to be incorporated in other minerals as excess 40Ar*, just as 40Ar* degassing from the mantle does. Excess 40Ar* has been recorded in many minerals (some with essentially no 40K) in crustal rocks—quartz, plagioclase, pyroxene, hornblende, biotite, olivine, beryl, cordierite, tourmaline, albite, and spodumene.7 The Ar-Ar method has also been used to confirm the presence of excess 40Ar* in feldspars and pyroxenes.8 In a recent study 128 Ar isotopic analyses were obtained from ten profiles across biotite grains in high-grade metamorphic rocks, and apparent Ar-Ar “ages” within individual grains ranged from 161Ma-514Ma.9 This cannot be solely due to radiogenic build-up of 40Ar*, but due to incorporation by diffusion of excess 40Ar* from an external source, namely, 40Ar* from the mantle and other crustal rocks and minerals. Indeed, a well-defined law has been calculated for 40Ar diffusion from hornblende in a gabbro due to heating.10 Excess 40Ar*, which accumulated locally in the intergranular regions of the gabbro, reached partial pressures in some places of at least 10-2atm.

This crustal migration of 40Ar* is known to cause grave problems in regional geochronology studies. For example, in the Middle Proterozoic Musgrave Block (northern South Australia), a wide scatter of K-Ar mineral “ages” was found, ranging from 343Ma to 4493Ma due to inherited (excess) 40Ar*, so no meaningful interpretation could be drawn from the rocks.11 Of the diabase dikes which gave anomalous “ages,” it was concluded that the basic magmas probably formed in or passed through zones containing a high partial pressure of 40Ar*, permitting inclusion of the gas in the crystallizing minerals. Likewise, when Ar “dating” was attempted on Proterozoic granulite-facies rocks in the Fraser Range (western Australia) and Strangways Range (central Australia), it was found that garnet, sapphirine, and quartz contained excess 40Ar* that rendered the Ar dating useless because of “ages” higher than expected.12 The excess 40Ar* was probably incorporated at the time of the formation of the minerals, and calculations suggested a partial pressure of ~0.1 atm Ar in the Proterozoic lower crust of Australia, which extends over half the continent.

An Ar-Ar “dating” study of high-grade metamorphic rocks in the Broken Hill region (New South Wales) found widely distributed excess 40Ar*.13 Plagioclase and hornblende were most affected, step heating Ar-Ar “age” spectra yielding results up to 9.588Ga. Such unacceptable “ages” were produced by excess 40Ar*release, usually at 350-650°C and/or 930-1380°C, suggesting excess 40Ar* is held in sites within respective mineral lattices with different heating requirements for its release. Thus at crustal temperatures, which are less than 930°C, some excess 40Ar* will always be retained in those trapping sites in minerals where it is “held” more tightly. A viable interpretation of these Broken Hill data was only produced because assumptions were made about the age of the rocks and of a presumed subsequent heating event (based on Pb-Pb and Rb-Sr dating), when it is conjectured that accumulated 40Ar* was released from minerals causing a significant regional Ar partial pressure of ~3 x 10-4atm.

Domains within the mantle and crust have been identified and the interaction between them described, all of which is relevant to the migration and circulation of Ar (and thus excess 40Ar*) from the lower mantle through the crust.14 The six domains are physically distinct units which exhibit wide differences in average physical and chemical properties, as well as structure and tectonic behavior. They are the lower mantle (below 670km), upper mantle, continental mantle lithosphere, oceanic mantle lithosphere, continental crust and oceanic crust, the latter four constituting the earth’s crust. Each is a distinct geochemical reservoir.

A steady-state upper mantle model has been proposed for mass transfer of rare gases, including Ar.15 Rare gases in the upper mantle are derived from mixing of rare gases from the lower mantle, subducted rare gases, and radiogenic nuclides produced in situ. Assuming a 4.5Ga earth, it is claimed, “The lower mantle is assumed to have evolved isotopically approximately as a closed system with the in situ decay of 129I, 244Pu, 238U, 232Th, and 40K adding to the complement of initial rare gases.” Thus some of the 40Ar* must be primordial (not derived from radioactive 40K), but how much is unknown. It is also claimed that 40K decay in the upper mantle further increases the radiogenic 40Ar there by a factor of ~3 compared with the lower mantle, but this also presupposes a 4.5Ga earth and doesn’t allow for primordial 40Ar* already in the upper mantle. The bulk of the 40Ar* in the lower and upper mantles could be primordial, but there is no way of knowing, as primordial 40Ar is indistinguishable from 40Ar*.

Because it is known that excess 40Ar* is carried from the mantle by plumes of mafic magmas up into the earth’s crust, it is equally likely that much of the excess 40Ar* in crustal rocks could be primordial 40Ar. Thus, we have no way of knowing if any of the 40Ar* measured in crustal rocks has any age significance. Additional to the primordial 40Ar from the mantle is 40Ar* released from minerals and rocks during diagenesis and metamorphism, so that there is continual migration and circulation of both primordial 40Ar and 40Ar* in the crust which is reflected in their presence in CO2-rich natural gases. Therefore, when samples of crustal rocks are analyzed for K-Ar andAr-Ar “dating,” one can never be sure that whatever 40Ar* is in the rocks is from in situ radioactive decay of 40K since their formation, or if some or all of it came from the mantle or from other crustal rocks and minerals. Thus all K-Ar and Ar-Ar “dates” of crustal rocks are questionable, as well as fossil “dates” calibrated by them.

Evidence for a Young World

Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.

The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this “the winding-up dilemma,” which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same “winding-up” dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called “density waves.”1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope’s discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the “Whirlpool” galaxy, M51.2

2. Too few supernova remnants.

According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.

According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical “Oort cloud” well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the “Kuiper Belt,” a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists’ problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.

Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

5. Not enough sodium in the sea.

Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today’s input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billionyears. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.

The total energy stored in the earth’s magnetic field (“dipole” and “non-dipole”) is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field’s total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15

7. Many strata are too tightly bent.

In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.16

8. Biological material decays too fast.

Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of “mitochondrial Eve” from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20

9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years.

Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 “Squashed” Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 “Orphan” Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.23,24

10. Too much helium in minerals.

Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.

11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world’s best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.

Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

13. Agriculture is too recent.

The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31

14. History is too short.

According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The biblical time scale is much more likely.31

Summary of RATE Research in Pdf

Recommended Books:

Are you a thinker? If so, you must have questions about origins. If you are a Christian, you must have questions concerning the Bible and many science teachings today. This book is written to help all in the church find the answers to these and other questions: Is the Bible’s 6,000 years acceptable? Can the Bible and Science be reconciled? Does your faith rest on solid evidence? Has the Bible ever been found errant? What’s behind secular teachings concerning origins? This book will serve as a guide for those who are: Educators Pastors Home schooling parents Students seeking the truth Do you remember when you were a child lying on the grass with your friends on a warm summer’s evening, gazing into the night sky? You would let your inquisitive minds wonder and you pondered the questions that nearly everyone before had asked. “Why is the sky blue?” “What are the clouds made of?” “Where did the objects come from?” “How did they get here?” “What holds the moon up?” “How can birds fly?” You went through the questions that journalists use when they cover a story: who, what, when, where, how. Then you may well have personalized your investigation and wondered about your own existence. If you found it intriguing, difficult, and confusing to study and resolve the conundrums that resulted from your questions, you were not alone. Just like everyone else, you found the answers to some of your questions by asking your parents, teachers, and other respected adults. However, as an adult you may still not have resolved some of your questions. But, remember, just as each of us wrestled with these thoughts individually, so did mankind as a whole. The human race collectively is still struggling for many of the same answers. It is also no secret that world-renowned scientists often gather for conferences trying to resolve many of these same questions. The two big questions that the natural sciences are trying to resolve are these: How can there be anything, and why does anything exist? Thus, the origin and purpose for all that exists still has eluded the sciences. Yet I have found that looking for answers is much like looking for anything else—we spend too much time searching in the wrong places. This booklet is written with the hope that it will first help you to look in the right places, and secondly that it will help to strengthen your faith. Hopefully, this will make you feel more confident when expressing your beliefs to others, whether they are believers in the Scriptures or not.

Did God create our world in six literal days, or did it evolve on its own over countless eons of time? The age of the earth – a key question in the creation/evolution debate – has been portrayed as an issue of science versus religion, but is it really that simple?

The answers to these questions are vital to understanding not just earth science, but also the biblical record.

The Young Earth scientifically examines the evidence to see what the earth actually reveals about itself. This classic and definitive work, newly revised and expanded, demonstrates that the Bible can be trusted in questions of science and history.

The Young Earth offers both compelling scientific analysis and effective biblical exposition. A powerful resource, it also includes a CD with PowerPoint presentations that illustrate such key concepts as salt levels in the oceans, the age of the atmosphere, the accumulation of ocean sediments, and much more.

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• Illustrated slides illuminate important points

Scientifically, irrefutably, the truth of God’s world proclaims the truth of God’s Word.

Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites–such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.