Re: YEC refutation

>Is there ONE argument that can be used to show clearly and convincingly
to a nonscientific person that the earth really really is much older
than a few thousand years?<

Some simple examples of things that clearly look old:

Rocks that show a history. I have a nice piece of Castle Hayne
Limestone that contains fossils and pebbles. Some of the pebbles
contain fossils and pebbles. These pebbles contain sand grains. The
pebbles have phosphatic coatings on them. Thus, we have a series of
events:

Sand exists, is buried in carbonate mud.
Mud hardens into rock.
Rock broken into small pieces.
Pieces worn down into round shapes.
Phosphatic coating forms through a long period of sitting still on the
sea floor; first set of fossil animals living.
Pebbles and shells buried in carbonate mud.
Mud hardens into rock.
Rock broken into small pieces.
Pieces worn down into round shapes.
Phosphatic coating forms through a long period of sitting still on the
sea floor; second set of fossil animals living.
Pebbles and shells buried in carbonate mud.
Mud hardens into rock.
Shells dissolve away.
Holes from shells filled with calcite.
Several additional layers of different kinds of sediment with different
kinds of fossils deposited on top of the rock (may overlap in time with
dissolution and filling).

Several underlying layers also have similarly complex histories for the
rocks in them.

Of course, the standard YEC explanation is that the Flood did all of
that. However, it has to sequentially do several different things just
to get this one small rock, and the earth has miles of rock layers that
must be explained.

Plate tectonics
We can measure the current rate of plate motion-roughly equal to
fingernail growth. Yet the geologic record shows extensive movement of
the plates. Evidence includes the direction (both in the horizontal
and vertical plane) of magnetic traces in the rocks; patterns in the
sea floor (increasing sediment thickness away from spreading centers;
decreasing crust temperature away from spreading centers); climate
changes (the rich microfossil deposits associated with equatorial
upwelling in the eastern Pacific occur further north and northwest the
deeper you sample the sediment; equatorial conditions in Triassic
deposits in southeastern North America; traces of late Paleozoic
glaciation in what's now the Sahara; etc.); matches between structures
such as old mountain ranges and ancient rock formations on different
continents; biogeographic patterns (organisms in common in what are now
widely scattered locations; drastic differences between what are now
adjacent areas); and many other pieces of evidence. YEC responses
include denial of the evidence and rapid plate tectonics. However, the
latter is in gross violation of the second law of thermodynamics. At
its current pace, plate tectonics produces most of the volcanism and
earthquakes around the world. Speed it up and you have correspondingly
more energy going into volcanism and earthquakes. Also, you need a
power source to speed it up.

For example, there was an ocean between northwestern Europe and
northeastern North America. This ocean closed and then the modern
North Atlantic opened. Also, North America has moved from equatorial
to its present location during this time interval. Being
conservative, that's about 9000 km of motion (1000 km of closing, 3000
km of opening, and 5000 km north, making the unlikely assumption of a
relatively straight route). Allowing the common YEC claim of an entire
year for this to take place, that's about 1 km/hr as a very low
estimate. The tsunamis caused by continents moving that fast would
quickly sink the ark.

----------------------------------------
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama, Box 870345
Tuscaloosa AL 35487
"James gave the huffle of a snail in
danger But no one heard him at all" A.
A. Milne
Received on Tue Jun 14 15:59:38 2005