Now, I am so sick of ignorant creationists using the following redundant arguments in their little lists of inerrable proof of a young earth. At first, they may seem like they can stand their ground, but once they are looked upon more closely, they become so stupid that you can't believe you actually thought they were good points. Read on and see what i mean.
"Proof" #1 -- The moon is receeding at a rate of a few
inches per year. That is much too fast for the Earth-Moon system to be more
than a few million years old
Really? A few inches per year you say? Wow that does sound like a
rather speedy recession. Lets do some math and check this claim out. Just
for fun, we'll say that a "few" inches per year is 12. Now, in 1 million
years, the moon would have moved 12 million inches. That may seem like a
huge distance, but lets put that into perspective. 12 million inches is
equal to a mere 183 miles. In astronomical terms, 183 miles is nothing,
concidering that the moon's orbit causes it to vary much more than 183 miles
all on its own. And that is 183 miles in 1 million years IF
the recession rate is 12 inches per year, which it isnt. The recession rate
has been pegged at 3.8 cm per year [1.5 inches]. So in 1 million years at
the known rate of recession, the moon will have receeded approximately
24 miles. That really doesn't seem all that speedy to me? What do you think?
"Proof" #2 -- The sun is shrinking at a rate of
5 feet per hour. If that is extrapolated backwards for too long, the sun
would be too large and too close to the earth for life to survive.
Therefore, the earth can't be very old.
At a quick glance, these figures seem sound, and if in fact the sun is
shrinking, and if it is doing so at a constant rate, then serious problems
would start to arise when we go back 100,000 years when the sun would
have been almost a million miles closer. This figure is a little steep for the
young earther though. For the young earther who is stuck on the maximum age of 10,000 years, this
argument holds little impact as 10,000 years ago, the sun would have
only been approx. 83,000 miles larger, which doesnt make a huge difference
in life on earth. Even so, it has never been proven that the sun is
shrinking, let alone shrinking at a constant rate of 5 feet per hour.
"Proof" #3 -- Saturn's rings are unstable and can't
be more than 10,000 years old. Therefore the earth is young
Am I the only one who sees the extreme stupidity in this argument? Granted
Saturn's rings are unstable, but how does that dictate the age of the earth?
It is very possible that Saturn's rings were created a few thousand years
ago by two moons colliding [seeing as Saturn has many moons] for example.
Even though Saturn's rings may be unstable, that doesn't prove that Saturn
is less than billions of years old, let alone the earth.
That is all for now with my debunking of young earth "proofs". I will post more as they annoy me. I remind you not to take my figures and arguments at face value. Go out and read about lunar recession and solar shrinking and other science on your own. Be sure to check out NASA or some other reliable source, and not some personal homepage like this one. The purpose of this page is to merely encourage you to read more, and not to be an inerrable source of knowledge as creation "science" homepages claim to be.
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