Creation Science Rebuttals

     Creation science proponent Tas Walker wrote an article titled "Eroding Ages,” claiming that by old earth standards, we would have no land left on earth. 

     The basic premise of this article is that given a "billions of years old earth,"  by today's erosion rate, there should be no continents left on earth at all.  He is right, if you accept today's erosion rate as constant, or even decrease it by some order of magnitude, you would not have the continents.  There is new earth being formed, through tectonics and volcanic events, and through sedimentation, but by and large, these do not add up to the amount being eroded...if you accept these erosion and depositional rates as constant.

     I'm not going to argue for changing these rates through time.  But, for the old earth creationist, we must realize one thing.  We know for a fact that you can't deposit all the sedimentary layers in the world during the short time of the flood (click here).  We know from astronomical data that the universe is billions of years old.  So, how do we answer this erosion problem?

     We answer it using a little common sense and logic.  What is the exact term for the following time frame...from the beginning of the universe 13.7 billion years ago, thru the creation of Adam and Eve?  It is called "creation," or the time that God was creating the universe, the world we live in.  With supernatural creative processes at work over the last 4.5 billion years of earth history, can we "assume" that erosion and deposition rates were constant?  No, we can't...but in fact we can prove they WERE NOT constant.  When God, in Genesis 1:9, gathered the waters into one place, and let the dry land appear, this verse alone proves that erosion and deposition rates were not constant during the creation period, because it was a time of highly increased, supernatural deposition.

     So, you see, we need not be concerned about this "erosion" problem.  However, non-Christians do have to contend with it to disprove God's existence.  So now, we have another tool for witnessing to non-Christians.

     One final thought.  In a box on the web page called Mountains and the Flood, the author alludes to the fact that fossils have been found at high elevations.  He also explains that there is enough water in the oceans to cover the earth to a depth of 1.7 miles, if it were flatter than it is now.   He is referring to the theory of catastrophic plate tectonics, which supposedly occurred during and possibly shortly after the Flood.   There is not enough water in the world to cover the present-day topography, so the young earth creation science has to lower the land prior to the flood, then raise it to its present day height. 

     Think for a minute about this logic...fossils have been found in the Himalayas, at more than 20,000 feet elevation (about four miles).    Assuming the Himalayas were less than 1.7 miles high, this model proposes that the rock layers were deposited, then the tectonic forces thrust them up to over four miles in elevation, or an increase of 2.3 miles (for the fossils alone).  Mt. Everest would go from 1.7 miles high to over 5.5 miles high, or an increase of 3.8 miles), in a time period not longer than the Flood (370 days).