by Lenny Flank
(c) 1995
The creationists, faced with a wealth of massive evidence from several different scientific disciplines for an old earth, from radio-dating to astronomy to sedimentary deposit, have gamely tried to explain this all away within a scientific framework, and have failed miserably. It is not surprising, then, that have been forced to leave the realm of science altogether and fall back on their religious doctrines for an explanation of the apparent antiquity of the earth. Here is their answer:
"It will be maintained that even though any given age measurement may be completely erroneous due to leaching or emanation or some other effect, there are many cases now known where the age estimate has been checked by two or more different methods, independently. It would seem improbable that the elements concerned would have each been altered in such a way as to continue to give equal ages; therefore, such agreement between independent measurements would seem to be strong evidence that alteration had not occurred and that the indicated age is therfore valid.
"We reply, however, that the Biblical outline of earth history, with the geologic framework provided thereby, would lead us to postulate exactly this state of the radioactivity evidence! We would expect radiogenic minerals to indicate very large ages and we would expect different elements in the same mineral, or different minerals in the same formation, to agree with each other." (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, pp 343-344)
And why would the creationists "expect" the radio-dating methods to give such old ages for the earth? Because even though the universe actually IS only 6,000 years old, they say, God arranged everything to make it LOOK like it was really 4.5 billion years old!! As Whitcomb and Morris airily put it:
"If God actually created anything at all, even the simplest atoms, those atoms or other creations would necessarily have an appearence of some age. There could be no genuine Creation of any kind, without an initial appearence of age inherent in it. And if God could create atomic stuff with an appearence of age--in other words, if God exists!--then there is no reason why He could not, in full conformity with His character of Truth, create a whole universe full-grown." (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, 238).
Morris later added:
"Real creation necessarily involves creation of 'apparent age'. Whatever is truly created--that is, called instantly into existence out of nothing--must certainly look as though it had been there prior to its creation. Thus it has an appearence of age." (Morris, 1972, p. 62)
This is the "scientific evidence" that the creation "scientists" would like to have taught in a biology classroom--the universe isn't really old, it only LOOKS that way because that's the way God made it. Why does radio-decay give such old dates for the earth? "With each mineral containing a radioactive element, there were also at the original Creation all of the daughter elements in the decay series, including some of the final stable product." (Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, p. 345). Why do the bristlecone pines have so many tree rings? "Creation had to involve some superficial appearence of earth history. Trees were likely created with tree rings already in place." (ICR Impact, "Tree Rings and Biblical Chronology", June 1994) Why do we see light from stars that are billions of light years away? "This requirement is a very little thing to a Creator! . . . The 'light' bathing the earth on the first three days was created in space as en route from the innumerable 'light bearers' which were yet to be constituted on the fourth day . . . In fact, in view of God's power and purposes, it is by far the most reasonable, most efficient, and most gracious way He could have done it." (Morris, 1972, pp 61-62)
Taking the creationist argument ("the universe looks old because that's how God made it to look") to its logical conclusion, one can safely conclude that the universe was actually made last night, and is really only a few hours old. Everything that indicates otherwise--your memories of yesterday, the leftovers in your garbage can, the Time magazine from last month--all were put there by God during the Creation last night to make it LOOK as though the universe were older. Who could prove otherwise?