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This
is an email we received that had a bad return address, so our reply
never got through. This is our reply, with the email we received
included within the reply.
Hi Richard:
Thanks for writing.
I'll be glad to answer your questions and provide as much information
as you'd like. For now I'll answer your questions in brief. Just
let me know which areas you'd like to go into more depth on.
Richard ___ wrote:
I was bored and was looking through random websites andthis turned
up. This gave me quite a laugh. You claim that the world is 6000
years old yet you do not have satisfactory scientific evidence to
prove this. In your discussion you have completely missed out the
evidence of carbon and potassium dating as well as polar wandering
curves, mantle plumes which all point to a much older earth and
these experiments are able to be repeated and the same results are
obtained.
Carbon-14 dating
can show the decay of carbon-14 over 50,000 years, and with the
very latest techniques it can go back as far as 100,000 years.
Potassium, and
other forms of isochron dating, can measure the radioactive decay
that corresponds to hundreds of millions of years.
So these are
two different forms of dating, used to determine two mutually exclusive
ranges of dates. For example, something that has a potassium date
of 10,000,000 years will have no carbon1-14, and thus can not be
carbon dated.
Recently Dr.
Paul Giem conducted an extensive survey of the radiocarbon literature
from the '80s and '90s. He found more than 70 published reports
of significant amounts of
carbon-14 in "ancient" (millions of years) organic samples.
These samples included petrified wood, shells, whale bone, coal,
oil and natural gas. When a coal bed is dated at 300 million years
old, but it has a carbon-14 date of 40,000 years, there is a problem.
There should be NO CARBON-14 in something that is millions of years
old.
The problem
appears to come from the assumption that radioactive decay has always
occurred at the rate we measure today. There are other research
results that is supporting
this, such as differences in dating between dates established with
alpha decay and dates established with beta decay. Another factor
pointing in this direction is that the products of decay (helium)
shows the characteristics of there only having been 5-10 thousands
years of decay.
There is a lot
more research to be done, but as science progresses we are getting
a better picture of what has happened in the past, and the result
has been increasing evidence for a young earth.
Living in a
geologically active area I am familiar with mantle plumes. They
are the result of shifts in the earth's plates. What the geological
record shows is fully consistent with a young earth (6,000 years)
that passed through a period of a huge world-wide flood--just as
the Bible says. The flood did not come from 40 days and nights of
rain, as folklore says. The Bible describes the "fountains
of the deep" erupting and water pouring out of the ground.
Huge geological shifts caused mountains to sink and the ocean floor
to rise. It was a cataclysm unlike anything we can imagine. There
was a lot of shifting of the earth plates and lots of volcanic and
lava (mantle plumes) activity.
Polar wandering
curves are caused by plate tectonics (continental plate collisions).
This is consistent with the effects of the cataclysmic events resulting
from a world-wide flood.
However
in your evidence for the location of the garden of Eden you state
that there is sediment miles thick. I quite agree however you do
not seem to realise that the sediment would take several thousand
years to form and should probably still be forming today.
Recent observations have shown that deep layers
of sediment, with ten's of thousands of small layers, form very
quickly. Come out to where I live in the Pacific NW and I'll show
you a layer of sediment that is thirty feet high with thousands
of layers. It appears to be 100,000 thousand years old. However,
it was formed in less than three hours when Mt. St. Helens erupted.
If little Mt. St. Helens can quickly form a large deposit of sediment,
imagine what a world-wide flood would do.
It might also be of interest to you know that scientists have also created the building blocks of life in
conditions similar to those thought at the start of the Earth and this is a repeatable experiment.
You are referring
to the Stanley Miller experiments in 1953. Yes, they were repeatable
experiments, but they did not produce anything that could lead to
life.
I discuss these
experiements in detail in reply to another
email. In brief, the experient produced a form of amino acids
that are only found in dead materials, and it provided no mechanism
(information) for the amino acids to form proteins.
The scientific
community has recognized that a key problem with these experiments
is that information is required for amino acids to form proteins.
So even if the experiement had produced the right form of the amino
acids, there was no way they could combine to form proteins. In
living things RNA provides this information. So for life to have
formed from chemicals, the right RNA would have already had to be
present. But information (RNA) does not come from nothing, it requires
an intelligence... God.
I
believe that if you look at this with open eyes you will see how
little evidence there is for the creation theory.
Looking at the
evidence with an open mind is very important. And when that is done
the truth is that the evidence for evolution is lacking. There is
none. Although research into creation is almost banned by the scientific
community, what research that is being done is strongly favoring
the Biblical view that God created everything about 6,000 years
ago. The problem is that in our culture all you will get is assertions
that the earth is billions of years old and life came from nothing
and evolved into us (it's called from goo to you). Our culture so
strongly supports this view, in spite of the lack of evidence, that
you do not have the opportunity to use your open mind to fairly
examine the evidence. You only get to see one side.
Our blog recently
featured some postings on the "open
mindedness" of scientists who believe in evolution.
A good web site
with more information is: http://www.answersingenesis.org
If the bible is the word of God why are there variations in each edition of the bible? Is this because Man has made changes to it to gain power for themselves (more than likely considering human nature) and making the bible worthless or did God just mumble and we tried to catch what we could and hope?
Are you talking
about different translations?
We have portions
of the Bible going back to the 7th century BC, and there have never
been any indications of changes found. We have essentially a complete
copy of the Old Testament that was buried over 100 years before
Christ was born, and not found until the 1950's. And it is the same
as the Old Testament we've been using for 2000 years.
With the New
Testament we have over 25,000 ancient copies from a wide geographical
area. Historically there is no question, even among secular scholars,
that the Bible we now have is the same as was originally written.
If you are talking
about different translations, those are just different ways of expressing
the same thoughts. Our language (English) changes over time. That's
why there are new translations that may have different wording.
In addition, there are different translation methods. However, the
meaning is the same.
If you'll explain
what you mean by "variations in each edition" I'll be
happy to provide more information.
Thank you for taking time to read this e-mail you may wish to look up carbon dating and the prime-eval soup theory.
I hope I have
been helpful.
Yours in Christ,
Steve
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