Indeed, representing what is real and not illusory.
He didn't say that. He said it doesn't mean you can't believe in God or Gods. That's an altogether different thing.
I think you'll agree his main point is, (to paraphrase), it's not his opinion the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
It is 13.8 billion years old because it has been measured to be 13.8 billion years old. It's like you can't have an opinion on the distance from LA to New York. It's been measured, we know what it is.
Measuring something scientifically means repeatedly bringing every and any type of appropriate reliable test and measurement available to disprove that which is being measured.
That process is what showed the salt clock to not be a valid or reliable measurement as explained in the usd.edu article you linked. That process also confirms the distance from LA to New York is not 5 miles and the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
For someone to say they have an opinion or belief that the distance from LA to New York is 5 miles, would just simply be wrong to the point of silly. Likewise an opinion or belief that the earth is a few thousand years old, is as wrong and as silly.
Young Earth Creationists (and I'd suggest, Short Distance Believers) should, as Professor Brian Cox says in the vid, "just stop it".
Stu wrote: He didn't say that. He said it doesn't mean you can't believe in God or Gods. That's an altogether different thing.
Well, if you listen very carefully, he actually does say that believing in God can't be ruled out, and he contrasted that with those who believe in flat earth.
5:13 People say, “the earth’s flat”, or whatever.. it isn’t, and we’ve measured it, so just stop it.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t be spiritual and you can’t be religious. I would say and it doesn’t mean you can’t believe in God or gods...that’s not ruled out.
See, he doesn't say..."just stop it," as he does to flat-earthers,....he says a belief in God is "not ruled out."
Stu wrote: I think you'll agree his main point is, (to paraphrase), it's not his opinion the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
It is 13.8 billion years old because it has been measured to be 13.8 billion years old. It's like you can't have an opinion on the distance from LA to New York. It's been measured, we know what it is.
Yes, I do agree with you that he was making a point that it's not his opinion, but that it's been measured to be 13.8 billion years old. But you have to remember, his belief system does not allow for God to have done what God said He did....create the universe in working condition.
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Creationist say, "the chicken," of course. However, it would be wrong to say, 1 day after the first chicken was created, that it MUST HAVE ALREADY LIVED FOR A YEAR BECAUSE IT WAS A FULLY FORMED CHICKEN. It was created an adult and didn't have to go through the growing process to get there. In the same way, the stars were created with their light already reaching the earth, so we can't use the number of light years to measure how old the earth is. Remember, it's because God has told us that He created all things, that we Christians believe Him and understand it to be so. There are many aspects of science that are consistent with that belief.
Stu wrote: That process is what showed the salt clock to not be a valid or reliable measurement as explained in the usd.edu article you linked.
I didn't think the arguments made against the salt clock seemed very reliable.
Evolutionists can't accept that the salt levels in the ocean are increasing, because it disproves their theory requiring billions of years for evolution to occur, so they have to try to make is seem like it doesn't.
Have you ever boiled a pot of water dry? It always leaves a slight residue. The water will evaporate out and leave the minerals behind. I don't see why that wouldn't happen with ocean water, and I don't need to be a scientist to figure that one out.
https://www.icr.org/article/evidence-for-young-earth-from-ocean-atmosphere
Temperature changes are not the only window on the history of the ocean. Another piece of evidence arguing for a young ocean relates to the amount of salt it contains and the rate at which it was added. Austin and Humphreys (1990) conducted an inventory of the amount of Na + in the ocean (the positive ion from salt) and found that by making assumptions most favorable to an old-age, evolutionary model, such as no initial Na + , minimum input rates, and maximum output rates, the oldest ocean calculated was 62 million years. This is almost 75 times less than the 4.5 billion years for the conventional estimated age of the earth. The calculated age can easily be accomodated into a young, creationist model when non-zero initial concentrations of Na + and the likely affects of the Genesis Flood are considered.
Na + is the most common dissolved metal in the ocean. The worldwide delivery of Na + to the ocean by rivers has been recognized by scientists for hundreds of years (Halley, 1715). Until the early 1900's salt in seawater was thought to be a legitimate method for estimating the age of the earth. However, with the discovery of radioisotope dating which gives age estimates of 4.5 billion years, the concentration of Na + was believed to give an estimate of residence time rather than the age of the earth. Residence time is the average length of time the sodium ion would survive in the ocean before being removed. This steady state model of salt in the ocean says that Na + is removed from the ocean about as fast as it enters, causing the amount of Na + in the ocean to remain roughly constant with time (Rubey, 1951).
Austin and Humphreys (1990) compared the magnitude of the input and output rates of Na + to determine if the model is close to being in steady state. They computed the minimum input from eleven sources of Na + to the ocean including rivers, sediments, atmospheric and volcanic dust, glaciers, ground water, and hydrothermal vents and seven sinks of Na + from the ocean including sea spray, cation exchange, pore water, halite deposition, basalt alteration, and albite and zeolite formation. They found a minimum input rate today of 457 billion Kg/year and a maximum output rate of 122 billion Kg/year. Only 27% of the Na + going into today's ocean can be accounted for by known output processes. A separate study by Drever, et al. (1988) showed that the negative ion Cl - is also being added to the ocean at a much faster rate than it is being removed. Therefore, the ocean is not presently in a steady state condition and the age of the earth must be less than 62 million years.
A maximum age of 62 million years still seems like an extremely long period of time compared to a Biblical age of thousands of years. But, remember, the study by Austin and Humphreys (1990) went overboard to give the evolutionary time scale the benefit of the doubt. The estimated age still falls far short of the assumed conventional age of the earth. However, if one were to factor in Biblical arguments, this number would be reduced significantly, likely down to only thousands of years.
For example, there is no reason to assume the ocean didn’t already have dissolved salts when it was formed. Many of the fish and other creatures which live in the ocean today require salt water to survive. They would likely have been able to adapt to a more salty environment but probably not to the level of concentration observed today if it was originally fresh water. So, a major reduction in the estimated age of the ocean could be due to the ocean’s initial condition already containing large concentrations of Na + . There may be methods for estimating the initial concentration of salt in sea water by analyzing fossil fish or other organizations which died during the Genesis Flood. Their bodies may exhibit mechanisms or residual evidence of antediluvian conditions. There may also be other techniques for analyzing samples of pre-Flood conditions such as fluid inclusions in vesicles of pillow lava. Vesicles are small glass bubbles formed when magma cools. Pillow lava formed underwater would likely capture small samples of sea water which would have retained the characteristics of the water when it was trapped.
Of even more importance is the likely addition of major quantities of salts during the Genesis Flood. If the Flood is as catastrophic as the Bible states in which “all the high hills were covered”, it is probable that the Flood would have caused global devastation of unimaginable magnitude. There was no such thing as a calm, worldwide Flood. And, the geologic record exhibits evidence for an incredible global catastrophe in which the earth’s entire ocean and the crust were involved. About ¾ of the earth’s land surface is covered with sedimentary rock formed during the Genesis Flood when material from the crust was pulverized and mixed into the ocean, finally settling to the bottom to form sediments which turned into rock when the water retreated from off the land. During the process in which rocks, gravel, sand, and muds rained through the ocean to form sediments on the ocean floor the ocean was leaching salts and minerals from the materials. Dissolved salts and minerals were left in the water after the Flood contributing to the load of Na + and other ions we find in the ocean today. So, it easy to see that the ocean must be much younger than the conventionally assumed age and very likely supports an age of thousands of years if earth history as recounted in the Bible is taken literally.
Minor Gases in the Atmosphere
Like the ocean the atmosphere contains evidence of past geophysical processes. Instead of dissolved solids like the ocean, the atmosphere contains concentrations of minor permanent gases which help us understand past chemical and nuclear processes. The atmosphere is composed mostly of nitrogen (~78%) and oxygen (~21%). It also contains much smaller concentrations of many other chemically active gases such as carbon dioxide and the noble gases argon (~1%), neon, helium, krypton, and xenon which are inert ( Walker, 1977). These noble gases are particularly useful because they do not participate in chemical reactions and their concentrations can help to quantify the types and rates of nuclear processes. For example, the radioactive element uranium-238 is commonly present in many crustal rocks and forms helium when it disintegrates by nuclear decay. As the helium leaks from the rocks in the crust of the earth it escapes into the atmosphere where its concentration has been used to estimate how long the rocks have been decaying. Helium is a relatively light gas and a small amount can escape earth’s gravitational field when it is ionized and accelerate upward by what is called the polar wind. For several years before the magnitude of the polar wind was determined Vardiman (1990) reported that the lack of helium in the atmosphere argued for a young earth. That argument is no longer valid based on the measured and computed escape rate of helium to space in the polar wind. However, the large concentrations of helium remaining in crustal minerals is still a strong argument. Humphreys (2005) has presented an air-tight case that the earth is 6,000 ± 2,000 years based on the residual concentration of helium in zircon grains of granites and the rapid diffusion rate of helium from them.
Another gas which could be used for this calculation is argon. It is produced by the decay of uranium in the rocks of the earth. Argon contributes the largest amount of any of the minor gases to the atmospheric composition. It is also massive enough that it will not escape to space by any conceivable mechanism. Its concentration should then be directly related to the amount of nuclear decay in the rocks of the earth. However, quantifying the amount of time based on the amount of argon in the atmosphere has several complexities which make it difficult to use. First, the rate of escape from the crust to the atmosphere is uncertain. Because argon is such a massive atom, it is also relatively large compared to other gases like helium. It is harder for such a large atom to diffuse from the crystalline structure in rocks where it is formed and, thus, should have a slower escape rate from the crust. Diffusion rates of argon from various minerals need to be validated. Second, Vardiman et al. (2005) found that nuclear processes in rocks of the earth have been accelerated during episodes in earth history which make invalid a simple calculation of the age of the earth based only on the concentration of argon in the atmosphere divided by an assumed constant production rate. The large amount of argon in the atmosphere argues for a large amount of nuclear decay, but not necessarily a long period of time. And, third, like most geochronometers, the problem of the initial concentration of argon needs to be dealt with. Once again, it is not necessary to assume a zero concentration of argon in the atmosphere at its origin.
Conclusions
It is becoming more and more evident that many geophysical arguments from the ocean and atmosphere support a young earth. In fact, conventional explanations for an old earth must often beg the question by special pleading and ignoring conflicting data. Many processes like heat and salt in the ocean and helium and argon in the atmosphere argue directly for a young earth. Some of the estimates for the age of the earth can even be quantified when catastrophic processes revealed in the Bible are considered. So, the age-of-the-earth problem is not so much one of forcing science and the Bible to agree, but rather, one of believing the Bible to establish the proper scientific questions. The future of creation science is bright due to so many highly-trained scientists who have confidence in the Bible now working on such problems.
