This month I want to return to what I consider to be the single most important subject dealing with physical evidence, or the lack of it, and the creation-evolution debate. The topic deals specifically with time. So, it is time for more Geochronometers!
The evolutionists claim that Man evolved from ape-like creatures about 4,000,000 years ago. They further stipulate that recognizable modern Man has been in existence for at least 100,000 years. The shear magnitude of the deaths, burials and remnants of so large a population need to be considered prior to accepting any such claims.
If we were to conservatively say that a generation passed once every 25 years (and when was the last time a generation was 25 years long?), then in 100,000 years a total of 4,000 generations would occur. If the number of people on earth never exceeded 1,000,000 at any one time in the past, then in 100,000 years a total of 4,000,000,000 people would have lived, died and been buried somewhere on earth. This is an astronomical number.
When people are buried, whether or not their bodies are preserved, there are the artifacts left in the graves which identify them as human. Even if the body decomposes completely their jewelry, tools and vessels placed in the grave with them will survive.
Based upon evolutionary assumptions we should be able to dig straight down almost anywhere on earth and hit at least one grave from a prior generation. To date, however, even with all the money thrown into the search for them, we have only found about 300 Neanderthal skeletons. They have been found in caves from Spain to Syria to Israel.
The situation is even worse if you consider all the various supposed prior human forms. In total only a couple of thousand “stone age” human finds have been made.
If 4,000 generations have passed why haven’t we found many many more human burial sites? Where are all those artifacts that should have been left behind by those 4,000,000,000 people? Think about it, that is two-thirds of the entire human population alone today.
On the other hand, if the “stone age” were to be categorized by the number of such finds, then the supposed 100,000 years, so glibly tossed around, would shrink to only 500 years. That in turn would be totally consistent with the biblical record. It would be in line with a period of 500 years after the Flood of Noah during which people were reestablishing themselves; learning to live in totally new environments; and living without the ability to communicate readily between people groups. Such a situation would indeed cause a “stone age” period of human history.
When speaking of people, we also have to speak of the thing that they live on. We also have to consider the thing that surrounds the thing they live on. Has the earth been here for all those millions and billions of supposed years?
The evolutionists claim that the earth has been here for 4.5 to 5 billion years. The worlds oceans were supposedly fully formed 1,000,000,000 years ago. For that supposed 1,000,000,000 years the oceans are supposedly to have maintained a relatively constant salinity while life evolved from non-living material in it and, once formed by random chance, then life supposedly became more and more complex. If all this were true then we would predict that the ocean floors would be covered in deep sedimentary deposits accumulated over all those years.
What is the truth? If we take the amount of sediment currently found on the floor of the oceans and divide by the known rate of accumulation, then it would only take 14 million years for all the sediment to accumulate from the erosion of the continents. Can the mountains on the continents, let alone the continents themselves, be hundreds of millions of years old? No!
We can also look at this in the opposite way. If we were to assume that the oceans were 4.5 to 5 billion years old; that sediments had been pouring into the oceans at current rates for all that time; then the oceans should have a layer of sediment 18.5 miles high on top of each square foot of their surface. I would remind you, however, that there is, on average, only a half mile deep layer of sediment on the ocean floors and that the oceans have a layer of water in them about two miles deep. It simply isn’t possible to fit a layer of sediment 18.5 miles high on top of the ocean floors.
At the current rate of erosion around the world, all the sediments on the ocean floors would accumulate in only 30,000,000 years. First, that simply shows that evolutionary time frames are wrong! Second, it would fit very nicely with most of the sediments having formed rapidly in a worldwide flood followed by some additional deposits.
Then there is the question of the salinity of the earths oceans. Where does the salt come from? It pours into the oceans from the following sources: rivers, glaciers, volcanoes and vents above the surface, volcanoes and vents below the surface and dust.
Does any salt leave the ocean? Yes. Some salt leaves as sea spray (ask any one who has lived next to the ocean) and some by evaporation. The total leaving is about 4% of the amount coming in each year, leaving a net gain of 96% of the annual amount. Thus, the earths oceans are getting saltier and saltier each year.
It is simply impossible for the earths oceans to be very old at all. There aren’t enough sedimentary deposits and the ocean doesn’t have enough salt to be old.
What are the evolutionary responses to these points? First, they say that the continents have been uplifted and eroded on a cyclical basis. Well, that is a pretty story. If you add the depth of sediment in the oceans and the depth of the sediments on the continents above sea level together, you are still far short of the 18.5 miles of total sediments that should be there.
Second, the evolutionists propose that the ocean floor sediments are being destroyed by subduction under the continents; that is that the sea floors are sinking under the continents and are being absorbed in the earths crust. Here is the problem, according to the evolutionists own figures – the rate of destruction is only 1/10 the amount necessary to solve the problem. Or, conversely, the ocean floor sediments are forming at a rate ten times faster than they are being destroyed! Some days nothing works right!