Tape 3 - Evolution vs. Creation Seminar

Park Meadows Church

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always been just that, man. Of the loss of our ancestors, briefly, is what has happened before.

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Let me give you the picture quickly. You'd appreciate this fact. There was a famous Nebraska man found in the face of William Jennings Bryant time of the

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Scripps trial. Nebraska man was based upon a single tooth that they found out there in western

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Nebraska. Seemed to have some very important primate -like qualities or man -like qualities.

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Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborne, one of the greatest experts in that area, and W .K.

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Gregory and others studied this tooth, were convinced it was either a man -like ape or an ape -like man. They weren't quite sure.

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The London Illustrated News, their artist drew a reconstruction of Nebraska man based upon this tooth, and here we see it in the next slide.

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Next slide, please. Here's the famous Nebraska man, all based upon a single tooth.

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Isn't it marvelous what scientists can do? They can get such a wholesale production of conjectures out of such a trifling investment of facts.

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And this is one case here. Well, there you are. I certainly would call him man, wouldn't you? Well, after a few more years of study and collection, do you know what these gentlemen concluded?

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That that tooth was from a pig. It was a pig's tooth. It was a tooth from an extinct hickory or pig.

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Now, ladies and gentlemen, I'm not just poking fun at evolutionists, but look, that's what, if you were at the University of 23 and 24, this is what you'd seriously be presented as man's evolutionary ancestor.

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And it turned out to be a pig. They got that from a pig's tooth. I think that's the case where a pig made a monkey out of an evolution.

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Next slide, please. And then here's the famous pared -down man. If you were at the university, 1915, 1920, 1930, 1940, 1945, you would have been presented, here is proof of man's evolution, pared -down man.

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They found a rather ape -like jaw in a gravel pit near pared -down England, but it looked to be very old and the teeth looked human -like.

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About a year later, they found the piece of the human skull. They put the skull and the jaw together, the fragments together, and it became pared -down man,

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Eanthropus, Don Mann. Charles Dawson, amateur paleontologist, published a paper along with Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, director of the

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British Museum on pared -down man. This became the famous pared -down man and accepted by the world's greatest authorities as an evolutionary form of man.

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Well, eventually they were able to devise some method of giving a relative age to bones by the amount of fluoride absorbed from the soil.

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They dated the bones, and alas, the jaw bone was no older than 1910, the year it was found.

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The skull was not nearly the 500 ,000 years they had proposed for this creature. A few thousand years old, they examined the bones more critically, found they had been treated chemically to make them look old.

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The teeth had been filed with a file to make it look human -like. They could see the scratch marks in the teeth. In other words, pared -down was composed of a modern ape's jaw and a human skull, treated with chemicals to make them look old and fooled the world's greatest experts.

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Now, why was this fraud successful? Because of the powerful influence of preconceived ideas.

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But there you are, ladies and gentlemen, a reconstruction of our ancestor from a modern ape's jaw. Now, this is a case,

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I believe, when an ape made a monkey out of an evolution. And finally, we've already reviewed the case of Neanderthal man.

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We've lost him as one of our subhuman ancestors. So, ladies and gentlemen, I believe now, seriously, when all this evidence is completely and carefully and objectively evaluated, it certainly does not indicate a series leading from ape to man, but indicates that we were spatially created, just as we find described in the

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Bible, that God took the bone and flesh of Adam's side and made woman. And there is no way that we can reconcile that with the theory of evolution.

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Well, you may ask about races, where'd races come from? How about the cavemen? I've run out of time, so we'll leave that for the question and answer period later.

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Thank you very much. While everyone is coming back, let me remind you, if you'd like to get our newsletter, the

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Acts and Facts, there's still quite a few sample copies out there. You're welcome to take them. Also, they tell me that some of the books are sold out and others are about to be.

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So on this brochure, this not only describes the work of the Institute for Creation Research, but also has a complete list of our books and tapes that we distribute.

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So you can order from this if you'd like. Also, if there are any high school students interested in a choice of college, we'd encourage you to look into at least the possibility of coming to Christian Heritage College in San Diego.

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And so there's a little brochure out there describing that. We have about 15 different majors, bachelor's degree programs in many different fields, all built around the concept of creation.

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Now for the newsletter, if you'd like to receive it regularly, just give us your name and address. Some free of charge.

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We now have something like about 45 ,000 or so that go out each month around the country and around the world. Several have asked what books for different types and so on.

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So let me just mention a couple of others. I've already mentioned the Scientific Creationism book, which is our general handbook on all the different aspects of creation.

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Dr. Gish's book on the fossils is the best thing in that field. He also has a monograph on the origin of life, which we think is the best in that.

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The biochemical critique of origin of life theories. Then for someone who wants just a general introduction on a fairly basic level to both the scientific and biblical aspects of creationism, the little book,

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Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, is without in mind, it's structured around the biblical teachings on creation, but with the scientific data brought in to show where they fit.

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And then I might be pardoned for mentioning my own latest book, Many Infallible Proofs.

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This is our textbook in general Christian evidences. We use it at our college. All of our students take a year course in practical

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Christian evidences. And it's also already been adopted by a number of other colleges for similar courses.

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So it covers the whole field of the evidences of the truth of the Bible and of Christianity, including the scientific data, but also many other things.

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Dr. Gish and I will be willing to stay here after this session, as long as anyone wants to, to try to answer questions if we can.

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I know that in a short time today, we have only given some answers.

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We've probably raised many questions. We've not been able even to deal with a number of very important topics because of the lack of time.

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This is a very broad subject, but we will try if we can to answer such questions as you may have.

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To this last session, we want to deal with the subject of the history of the earth, particularly as interpreted in the light of geology, because this is quite important.

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We want to know how that ties in with the biblical framework of history. The Bible, of course, says that all things were made in six days, several thousand years ago.

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At least that's what it seems to say as you read it naturally. We pointed out earlier today that some suggestions for reinterpreting it to fit in with the geological ages are not really effective in doing that, either theologically or biblically or scientifically.

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They don't really satisfy. So we still want to know just what the real impact of the biblical history is and how this does tie in with the geological record of history.

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Now, the geological ages have been accepted, taught so long, so widely, that everyone just more or less assumes somehow that these really happened, and no one really questions it very much.

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But we want to show today in a very brief time again that we're not really having time enough to deal adequately with all these problems and issues that there is good evidence for questioning whether the

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Earth is billions of years old. It may not be. Now, the fossil record we've already pointed out is really the key evidence in deciding the history of life on the

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Earth, whether life has evolved or was created. Dr. Gibbs has shown a considerable length and documented it at all different stages of the so -called history of life.

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There are no transitional forms from one kind of life to another. There are gaps, systematic and regular gaps in the fossil record.

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So even if the geological ages did exist, even if we do have these billions of years of Earth history and different forms of life during the ages, there's still no evidence of evolution because each kind appears suddenly in the fossil record without any evolutionary ancestors leading up to it so far as the record goes.

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So there's really no evidence of evolution, but we still do have the question of what now do these ages mean?

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Why is it that, say, only marine invertebrates are found in the Cambrian? And why do we find the great reptiles in the

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Mesozoic? Why do we only find man very recently in the Pleistocene? And so on.

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What's the reason for this? What's the real significance of these geological ages? The importance of the fossil record,

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I think we at least can reemphasize by quoting from Dr.

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Dunbar of Yale, Carl Dunbar, in his book, Historical Geology, when he says, although the comparative study of living plants and animals can give convincing circumstantial evidence, fossils provide the only historical documentary evidence that life has evolved.

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So you see the importance of the fossil record to the whole system of evolution. We've just seen, however, they really don't support evolution anyway.

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But they are basic to the concept of evolution, so we wanna know just what the fossils do mean, where they really came from, how they fit in, especially in relation to the biblical interpretation.

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Well, of course, the system which has been used in geological interpretation and reconstruction of Earth history for the past 100 years or more is the one known as uniformitarianism.

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Now, originally, back 200 or 300 years ago, when men first began to study the rocks and the fossils, the first geologists, these men all believed that they were formed at the time of the

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Great Flood, described in the Bible, also described in many other traditions of nations around the world, and interpreted then these data in the context of catastrophism, but first through a system of multiple catastrophes and recreations.

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There was a period when that view was kind of in vogue, but then these became more and more numerous and less and less significant until finally they were all discarded and we had just the system of uniformitarianism.

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Let me quote again from Dr. Dunbar. He says, the uprooting of the fantastic beliefs of the catastrophists began with the

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Scottish geologist, James Hutton, who maintained that the present is the key to the past and that given sufficient time, processes now at work can account for all the geologic features of the globe.

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This philosophy, which came to be known as the doctrine of uniformitarianism, demands an immensity of time. It has now gained universal acceptance among intelligent and informed people.

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Everyone except uniformitarianism, he says, at least who's qualified to an opinion. And it demands an immensity of time.

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If we're going to explain the origin of all the great thicknesses of sedimentary rocks and the great earth structures and features around the earth on the basis of present processes, slow rates of sedimentation and erosion, slow movements of the earth and so on, we're gonna explain them in terms of these present processes by uniformitarianism, obviously it demands an immense amount of time to explain such things as the great thicknesses of sediments in the

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Grand Canyon or in the Mississippi Delta and other places around the world. And of course, an immense amount of time is also necessary to make evolution look feasible.

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We could show if we had the time, and we'll probably do that tomorrow morning at the youth meeting, that no matter how much time we have, it's still not possible for evolution to take place in terms of thermodynamics and probability and so on.

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But it does at least look fairly reasonable if we have billions of years. It demands it, whereas the creationist concept does not necessarily commit itself to a particular length of time, that is the basic creation model.

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And so the creationist can open his mind to the evidence that we find in the physical world that the earth might be young.

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When evidences like that come in, the evolutionist has to reject them out of hand because it cannot possibly fit the evolution model.

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But the creationist can look at both, and believe it or not, there is a great deal of evidence that the earth is young, physical evidence.

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You haven't heard much about it because it doesn't fit evolution, but it does exist, and we're gonna discuss some of it.

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First, let's deal with the question of these geological ages, though. Just how do we know they existed? Now, remember that history only began about 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 years ago, and by that I mean written records.

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Science is what we can see now, and you might say that history is what people have seen and recorded in the past, but beyond the beginning of written recorded history, we really don't know what happened or how long anything may have taken because nobody was there to record it.

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So real history, real written records only began a few thousand years ago, and that's not only in the

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Bible, but in Egypt and Babylonia and so on. So the only way we can really know about these great ages, which supposedly occupied billions of years, is by a certain indirect means, certain physical processes which we use.

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Well, how do you determine the age of a rock? If you go out in the field somewhere and you find a rock and you wanna know how old it is, how do you decide whether it's a

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Cambrian rock or a Jurassic rock, whether it's a billion years or a million years, how do you decide that?

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How do you know which rock is older than another rock? How do we decide things like that? But most people just kinda have the idea that geologists know how to do that, and they just trust them.

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They feel the geologists know about it. The old rocks somehow look old and young rocks look young, and you can tell.

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Now, I don't mean to be questioning the science of geology, not by any means.

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I have a high respect for it. That was my graduate minor, and I'm a new geologist, a member of the Geological Society and so on.

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So I don't question this as far as the actual geological processes and the data that are obtained are concerned.

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But when one tries to interpret where these things came from, when it goes beyond history, obviously, necessarily, it has to make some assumptions.

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And these assumptions are gonna be based on his presuppositions. And presuppositions necessarily involve some kind of philosophy, or even theology.

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And you find this is true, because in the rocks, we don't have any calendars. There's no way of telling how old they were in terms of these physical processes as far as science is concerned.

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Old rocks don't look old, and young rocks don't look young, necessarily, because you can find, say, very dense, consolidated rocks that look old, which are quite young.

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And you can find very loose, unconsolidated rocks which look young, which are quite old. And furthermore, there's nothing about the type of rock that tells you.

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It isn't as though the granites were formed in one age and limestones in another age, or anything like that, because you can find granites, limestone, sandstone, shales, all kinds of rocks in every age.

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Nothing about the type of rock that tells you the age. And furthermore, there's nothing about the minerals in the rock. You can find all kinds of minerals in rocks of all ages, and metals, and even coal and oil in rocks of just about every age.

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And furthermore, you can find all kinds of structural features, that is, falls, and folds, and movements of all sorts in rocks of all ages.

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These all seem to be indiscriminate with respect to the age. Now, it seems like at first glance, the evolution model, saying that all things are in this process of development and change, you would think that not only has life changed, but also geology should have changed through the ages.

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Because after all, the earth started from just some kind of dust, or randomness, or something, and it had to go through stages to get where it is, if evolution is true.

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So there should be different types of rocks in different ages. But they're not, they're all the same, you can't discriminate on the basis of any physical or structural criteria in the rocks as the age of a rock.

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Let me just quote to document that, just one quotation. We could document this if we had time at considerable length.

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Dr. Jeletsky, in the Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, says that the physical and stratigraphical criteria alone are devoid of any generally recognizable geological time significance.

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It's indeed a well -established fact that the physical stratigraphic rock units and their boundaries often transgress geologic time planes in most irregular fashion, even in the shortest distances.

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So there's nothing about the physical characteristics of the rock that tell you the age. Well, what does tell you the age of a rock? Now, you might think that radioactive dating is the way to do it.

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If you find a uranium mineral and you get the amount of lead in it and make a calculation, that'll tell you the age of a rock. Well, we'll discuss that briefly in a few minutes, but I think it's obvious right at this point that this isn't the way to tell the age of a rock for the obvious reason that all of these ages have been worked out long before anybody ever even heard about radioactive dating.

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So this was all done before that. And even now, when you find a radiometric date which disagrees with the previously determined date, the radiometric date will be discarded.

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And you do often find discrepancies like that, in fact, more often than not. And it's true that the radiometric dates are subject to all kinds of questions and problems and difficulties.

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And so it's possible that they could get out of line. And so if you find one that doesn't fit, then you throw it out.

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Now, so that isn't the way to tell the age of a rock. Well, how do you tell? Well, without going into great detail, because we only have a short time, let me quote from Dr.

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Hedberg, H .D. Hedberg, who was president of the Geological Society of America when he wrote this in the GSA Bulletin several years ago.

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He says that, our present -day knowledge of the sequence of strata in the Earth's crust is, in major part, due to the evidence supplied by fossils, is a truism.

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So it's fossils that tell you the relative sequence of strata, the relative age of rock fossils.

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But of course, not all fossils. Understand, it's only a few fossils that can do this because you find certain fossils that are in rocks of all ages, sponges, starfish, and so on.

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And even now, some of these so -called living fossils, like the coelacanth and like the neopylene and various others, as a matter of fact, you can find many types of organisms that seem to have survived all through the so -called geological ages.

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So it's not all the fossils that tell you the age of rock, but only certain ones that supposedly lived in certain ages.

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Now, if you find rocks that have those index fossils, then they will tell you the age of a rock. Now, he goes on to say, merely in their role as distinctive rock constituents, fossils have furnished one of the best and most widely used means of tracing beds and correlating them.

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And of course, there's nothing wrong with that, because if you have a given formation, a given rock formation, all formed essentially at the same time, because it's a distinct unit, and it'll have different, it'll have certain fossils.

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If you say, dig a well through the formation over here and one over here, you'd expect to come up with the same sort of microfossils.

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This is a good way of identifying the formation from one part of the region to another. That's used quite often in the oil industry and other industries, for example.

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But now the question is, suppose you have a formation in one region and a completely different formation in another region, how do you know which one of those is older than the other?

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Or maybe from one continent to another continent. How do you tell that then? Well, again, he goes on to say, let me quote again from Dr.

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Hedberg. He says, going far beyond this, fossils have furnished through their record of the evolution of life on this planet an amazingly effective key to the relative positioning of strata in widely separated regions and from continent to continent.

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So that's how you do it. To tell the relative positioning of strata from even continent to continent, you do that by the fossils.

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Yeah, but now how do fossils do that? Well, he says, through their record of the evolution of life on this planet.

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That's how fossils do that. And of course, that's reasonable. If we view evolution with truth, if evolution has taken place from the one -celled animal on up through these different stages, obviously if you find a rock in which you find fossils representing a certain stage of evolution, it's gonna, evolution can take the same route all the way around the world at the same time.

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So if you find a fossil representing a certain stage of evolution in a rock, that obviously dates that rock.

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It's the best way to do it. If you knew evolution were true. But now how do we know evolution is true?

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That's the question we're talking about. How do you know evolution is true? Remember what Dunbar said. He says fossils are the only historical documentary evidence of evolution.

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So fossils tell you evolution is true. And how do they do that? Well, you find old rocks that contain simple fossils.

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You find the rocks back in the Cambrian and have only the simple invertebrates. And you go on, as you come to more recent rocks, you find more complex fossils.

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So this shows you that life has evolved. That's assuming you know how to date these rocks so that we know which ones are old and which ones are young.

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Yeah, but how do we know that? Well, fossils tell you the age of the rock. But how do fossils tell you the age of the rock?

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Well, through their record of evolution. That's how they tell you the age of the rock. Yeah, but how do you know evolution is true? Well, because the fossil record tells you evolution is true.

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And so on. And you keep going around this circle, you see. Now, let me just admit right now that this is oversimplified because of lack of time.

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But this is really, this is really the key. Because when you find a contradiction, in other words, when you find, say, fossils from different ages mixed together, which you often find, or when you find rocks representing old ages because of the complex fossils on top of rocks representing young ages because of the,

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I mean, the other way around, old rocks on top of young ones. By always, you can introduce some secondary explanations against the modifications of basic models to explain how originally they were distinct, following a normal evolutionary sequence, but then they were reworked and got brought together, or they were replaced to get them out of natural order.

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You can always make it fit. But often you do have to make it fit. It doesn't fit in the normal way that they're found.

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Now, there's nothing basically wrong with circular reasoning because all reasoning is circular.

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If you press it far enough, you'll find that always you have certain premises. Whether you recognize them or not, they're there subconsciously, if nothing else.

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And based on those premises, you're gonna come out with certain conclusions. And if the premises are wrong, the conclusions will be.

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But as long as the whole system that you build up on that set of premises, the syllogistic chain of reasoning is all self -consistent with the data and the facts, then it's probably a pretty good evidence that it's a valid system.

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But when you begin to find contradictions and questions and difficulties, then it's time to begin to question the premises and see if maybe there isn't another model that will explain the same facts just as well or better.

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Now, we believe that as of this time now, after 150 years of uniformitarian geology built up on this system of evolution, which we've already seen the fossils don't really show anyway, that maybe it's time to look at another model.

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Maybe it's time to go back to the model of the founders of geology. That is the model of catastrophism to explain these data.

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Maybe instead of these different fossil ages representing really different ages in the evolution of life, they represent different ecological zones in the existence of life in one age, all buried in catastrophic geologic processes.

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Now, this has been almost heretical to suggest such a thing as this in geology for the past 100 years.

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But if you look in detail at these formations, at the sedimentary rocks, at the igneous rocks, at the fossils and the other structures and so on in these rocks, you begin to be impressed with the fact that everywhere you look, you do find evidence of catastrophism.

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But the very existence of fossils is evidence of that because after all, how do you get fossils?

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Fossils are dead things, but they have to not only be dead, but they have to be buried to be fossils.

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And to be buried, they must be buried suddenly. If you have just say a slow deposition of sediment at the delta of a river, a fraction of an inch per year, you're never gonna get a fossil elephant and something like that, or even a fossil fish.

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When a fish dies, it doesn't go down to the bottom and wait for sediment to accumulate at the rate of an inch per 100 years or something and make a fossil.

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Even when you have great schools of fish die, as you'd sometimes do in the Red Tide, great numbers of fish die.

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You get lots of dead fish, but you don't get fossil fish because they float around on the surface, they wash up on the shore, scavengers come along, decay takes place and so on, and they're gone.

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How do you get fossil fish? Now this is a question because, for example, in California, there's a place where there are literally a billion fossil herring in the shales.

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Now shales are usually interpreted as being formed very slowly because they represent fine sediment, supposedly falling very slowly through the water.

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But here we have great beds of shale with fossil fish, herring, a billion of them.

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And furthermore, these herring fish are distorted and contorted, they were trying to get away, but they couldn't. The sediment settled on top before they could.

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And some of them even have the color still on them, some of them even the soft parts on them. Yet they're supposed to be millions in myocene, 20 million years or so old.

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But now, how do you get things like that? You do not get that by uniformitarian processes. Then you think of the great beds of dinosaurs all over the world.

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All over the world, every continent has great beds of these giant reptiles buried in the sediments. And you have great beds of elephants in Siberia and Alaska and rhinoceros and horses and camels, great beds of hippopotamus in Sicily and great fish beds in New York and England and great beds of marine invertebrates everywhere.

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How do you get beds of fossils like this? Particularly significant sizes and numbers of fossils, they're not buried by uniformitarian processes.

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Each one speaks of some kind of a catastrophe. And not only the fossils, but the very structure of the rocks, if you look at them closely.

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In the first place, there are different kinds of rocks. You have igneous rocks, but igneous rocks representing the flow of a magma, rocks heated to very high temperatures so that they become liquid and flow.

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Well, you don't have a liquid rock very long. Formation of igneous rocks doesn't take long. Metamorphic rocks, nobody really understands processes of metamorphism.

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We don't see them taking place today. So must have had some non -uniformitarian system to produce them.

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And great falls, we don't see anything like that taking place today. We have earthquakes, well, but nothing like the great falls that you have at the, say, the

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Grand Tetons and so on. And as you look more in detail, you find that every type of rock and every type of structure in the geological column is not really commensurate with anything that's taking place today.

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And yet uniformitarianism says the present is the key to the past. There must have been processes operating at intensities in the past far beyond anything that we see operating today to really explain the rocks of the geologic column.

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This applies to the sedimentary rocks in particular. And that's where the fossils are, which identify the geological ages which support evolution.

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The sedimentary rocks were formed by the transportation of sediments from somewhere. Sediments were eroded, transported, deposited.

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But as you look more closely, you'll find evidence that these sediments were not formed slowly, such as sediments on a flood plain or in the river delta today.

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Well, even today, most of the sediments which are deposited today are formed just occasionally in intense floods.

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Normally you have very little, but you have most of it deposited once, twice a year in floods. Now, the processes of sedimentation are quite complex.

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They're not simple at all, and it's very much oversimplifying the same thing to say that we can study present processes of sedimentation, and on the basis of these, interpret the formation of the sedimentary rocks, because we don't even understand the present process of sedimentation.

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A lot of experiments have been devoted to it, a lot of study, and the equations, the functions are very complex, and they involve many different variables.

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And that's significant in itself, because since we have many different variables that influence the quantity of sediment that will be transported in a water flow, if any of those variables change, then the sediment will change.

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That is, the flow will change, and the deposition will change. Now, that's interesting because these sedimentary rocks are formed of strata.

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Now, you see them, the stratum, the little layers. You've seen them exposed in highway cuts and so on, and in sides of canyons.

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These little layers represent a sedimentary process. The strata may be a fraction of an inch, sometimes several feet thick.

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Each one is a distinct unit, therefore represents a distinct set of properties and conditions when it was being formed.

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But you don't have a constant set of hydraulic properties very long, only a matter of minutes or hours, so that each unit must have been formed rapidly, because soon as the factors change a little bit, the velocity of flow changes, or the source of the sediment changes, or something else, soon as that happens, then you're gonna get a distinct stratification plane, and a new stratum will be formed with a different set of properties.

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And you have all these different strata, each one representing a distinct set of hydraulic properties occupying a short period of time, probably a matter of minutes, maybe hours at the most.

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Now, furthermore, at the stratification plane, you find little irregularities, usually, representing the ripples on the surface of the sediment being transported.

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As you know, bottom of a river, sand being transported moves along in a ripple pattern, and these are found often in the fossil record.

29:57

You find fossil ripple marks and raindrop impacts and worm trails and so on, all of which indicate that these sediments not only were formed rapidly, but hardened rapidly, or these impressions wouldn't have been preserved.

30:08

There were processes of liquefaction taking place. There were cementing materials present, which caused them to set up quickly.

30:14

It didn't take millions of years to produce sedimentary rock from a loose sediment. And this is obvious from the fact that we have these very ephemeral markings in all of them.

30:23

But anyway, these little ripple marks at the interface between strata indicate that there's not been a significant time lapse from one to the other.

30:30

Otherwise, the ripple marks would have been planed off. So therefore, as you go through the whole formation, one stratum by stratum, each one formed rapidly, each succeeding one formed immediately after the preceding one.

30:42

You finally say, well, therefore, the whole formation was formed continuously, and since each unit was formed rapidly, the whole formation was formed rapidly.

30:49

And then you go from one formation up to the next formation. Now, at the top of the formation, you may have what they call an unconformity, where the strata are not resting conformably on each other, but there's been a period of erosion, maybe uplift, erosion, so there's an unconformity, and a time gap.

31:05

But no unconformity goes all the way around the world. In fact, you only go a short distance, and you trace out far enough, and you'll find a place sooner or later where the formation does go imperceptibly into the next one above that.

31:18

And then that one, in turn, you can analyze stratum by stratum, and that will go into another one somewhere else above that. Until finally, again,

31:26

I'm way oversimplifying for the lack of time, but I think you can document this and show it thoroughly if you took all the time you wanted.

31:34

Now, each unit of the geological column was formed rapidly, and each successive unit was formed immediately after the preceding one without any time lapse, at least someplace around the world you find that, from each one to the next one, even at the greatest break, such as the break between the great eras, the

31:53

Mesozoic and the Paleozoic and so on. Even there, you'll find places around the world where one era grades imperceptibly without a time lapse into the next one.

32:02

And that means, therefore, that since each unit is formed rapidly, and each subsequent unit formed immediately after the preceding one, the whole is the sum of its parts, and therefore the whole column was formed rapidly, continuously, without time breaks in between.

32:17

And therefore, it does lend itself very easily to interpretation in terms of cataclysmic processes.

32:25

Now, it's interesting that the concept of catastrophism has been refurbished in recent years.

32:32

It used to be that catastrophism was kind of an ugly word among geologists. Uniformitarianism was the watchword, but uniformitarianism has failed, and many people recognize that.

32:44

It doesn't explain things. Let me quote from a recent article in the Journal of Geological Education by Dr.

32:49

Heilman. It is hereby submitted, he says, that most scientists are guilty of an overly zealous interpretation of the doctrine of uniformitarianism.

32:58

Many instructors dismiss the possibilities of global catastrophes altogether, whereas others ridicule and scoff at these early ideas, and yet these same instructors will implore their students to think scientifically and to develop the principle of multiple working hypotheses.

33:12

If we have two hypotheses, why can't we look at both of them and see which one fits the facts? The fact is, he says, the doctrine of uniformitarianism is no more proved and some of the early ideas of worldwide cataclysms have been disproved.

33:25

It's still an open question as far as the actual geological evidence is concerned, and as we look more in detail and we see that each one of these formations does show evidence of rapid formation, well, now it's beginning to be realized that you can really only explain the geological data in terms of catastrophism, and more and more geologists are coming to that, particularly sedimentologists, who recognize that each sedimentary formation must have been formed at least in a local catastrophe.

33:51

Now, the question then is whether there are 10 ,000 different local catastrophes over the geological ages all over the world, whether maybe all of these local catastrophes do join together in a great complex of local catastrophes comprising a worldwide cataclysm.

34:06

We believe that the evidence supports that. An interesting book that was just published in the past few months,

34:14

Dr. Derek Ager at the University College of Swansea in England, head of the geology department there,

34:21

Dr. Ager is at great pains to tell the people who read his book that he is not a fundamentalist, he is not a creationist, he is an evolutionist, but he does say that the evidence, and he goes formation by formation and structure by structure through the ages and around the world, he shows that every one of them can only really be explained by a catastrophe.

34:40

And let me just kind of quote from one section. He says, the hurricane, the flood, the tsunami will be more in an hour or a day than the ordinary processes of nature have achieved in 1 ,000 years.

34:53

Almost has a biblical ring, doesn't it? One day is worth a catastrophe as 1 ,000 years. It doesn't take 1 ,000 years to produce a sedimentary formation.

35:03

It can happen very rapidly. He says, given all the millennia we have to play with in the stratigraphical record, we can expect our periodic catastrophes to do all the work we want of them.

35:13

And then he concludes his book this way. He says, in other words, the history of any one part of the earth, everywhere there's surprise, the history of any one part of the earth, like the life of a soldier consists of long periods of boredom when nothing's happening, and then short periods of terror.

35:30

Everything that happens in the history of the earth that's preserved in the records is a catastrophe, he says. Now, he doesn't think of a worldwide cataclysm, but rather of a lot of local catastrophes.

35:41

But again, if you look at the evidence, now, again, there's no evidence of difference of structure or types of rocks or types of minerals or anything else.

35:52

They all look alike from one age to the next. And furthermore, the fossils don't prove evolution. And furthermore, there's evidence that the whole record is continuous and each unit is rapid.

36:03

So it begins to look very reasonable to think, again, in terms of a model of a worldwide cataclysm, explaining these geological data.

36:10

Now, I know there are problems, and we'll probably get into some of these problems in the question period in a few minutes. And we don't have all the answers.

36:18

That's one reason we have a creation research society. A lot of people are studying some of these problems and trying to come up with good answers for the parts of the model that remain unclear.

36:28

Why do we have an Institute for Creation Research? We're trying to do a little of that too. But the fact is that the basic model of a worldwide cataclysm does fit the facts in general, we believe, better with fewer difficulties and problems than the model of uniformitarian evolutionism, which is dominant everywhere in the schools today.

36:46

At least the principle of multiple working hypotheses ought to be employed so that both of them are continually before the students so they can make their own minds as they look at each particular formation and set of data, whether this can be explained best in terms of catastrophism or uniformitarianism.

37:00

At least they ought to look at both. And for the most part, they have been doing that for a long time.

37:06

I do want to, though, deal very briefly with the question of the actual age of the

37:12

Earth. Now, even assuming that all these formations don't represent different ages but rather a contemporaneous period, one cataclysm, just in passing,

37:24

I might mention that it is possible, when you look at this more closely, to correlate the types of fossils through the geological column with the ecology of a pre -cataclysm world better than with the concept of evolving ages of life and stages of life.

37:44

Ecologically, if you imagine a great worldwide flood hitting the world today, what kind of work it would do?

37:51

Well, other things being equal, now this cataclysm would affect the sea bottom as well as the mountaintops.

37:56

It would be a worldwide hydraulic upheaval accompanied by tectonic activity and volcanic activity and a lot of other things, necessarily, this would be involved if you have a worldwide hydraulic cataclysm.

38:08

And other things being equal, the animals that would be buried at the lowest elevations would be those who live at the lowest elevations.

38:13

In other words, the simple marine invertebrates. The divisions of the fossils in the geological column don't necessarily speak of evolution of life from simple to complex.

38:24

Rather, they speak of ecology of life from simple to complex because the order of elevation is that same order. Also, the order of mobility, when the cataclysm hits, the simple animals are the ones that can't escape.

38:34

The more complex animals are the ones that can escape longer. And there's that order, too. And on a local scale, in the context of hydraulic transportation and deposition in a local formation, the activity of water as a sorting agent is very, very efficient.

38:50

Doesn't take a long time. If you have a whole mixture of objects of different sizes and shapes and you let them be transported by flow of water for a fairly short distance, they'll all be sorted out into objects of similar size and shape, and then when the deposition takes place, the simpler ones will be on the bottom because they have less resistance to settling.

39:08

Hydrodynamic sorting is a very effective agent in that respect, and I think this accounts for a lot of the data in particular formations where you have apparently simpler marine organisms on the bottom and more complex ones on the top of a given set of strata that are continuously deposited.

39:24

But that's a different subject, and it would take a long time to go into it. I think when we do go into it, you'll find that these explanations fit the facts just as well as the concept of evolution fits those facts, in fact, better.

39:36

Anyway, what about the age of the Earth as interpreted from radiometric dating? Haven't we proved by uranium dating, for example, that the

39:43

Earth is billions of years in age? It is true that certain rocks with uranium minerals, the lead that forms from the uranium decay indicates an age of three and a half or four billion years.

39:53

Potassium argon will do the same thing in some of them. Rubidium strontium. Radiocarbon will not give ages like that, but it does give ages back to 50 ,000 years or so of human sites, and that goes contrary to records of human history, which indicate history only began a few thousand years ago.

40:10

So all these seem to be serious problems until you look at it more closely. Now, remember that we don't have any real history before about four or 5 ,000 years ago.

40:20

That's all we have of written records, and so anything beyond that has to be, really, you have to guess at it.

40:27

You can maybe make an educated guess by using some physical process and making certain reasonable assumptions. So in the last analysis, since you can't test those assumptions, it's basically a guess.

40:37

Now, ask this question. That being the case, how do you know which process to use to measure the age of a formation or the age of the

40:44

Earth? Because isn't it true that there are almost an infinite number of different processes in the world? How do you know which one you can use?

40:51

All processes involve changes with time, but at certain rates, therefore, they ought to be at least implicitly available to measure the passage of time, if we know enough about them and can make reasonable assumptions about them.

41:04

We can never be sure of the assumptions because all this took place before there was anybody there to check the assumptions, so we don't know for sure.

41:10

So we always have to leave that open to question. But if we take certain processes like uranium decay or rate of sedimentation or something else, we can maybe come out with an estimate of a parent age, an appearance of age, but that doesn't mean that's a true age because we don't know about the assumptions.

41:27

Now, it is true that there are many processes which could be used. There are only three or four or five maybe which have been used to measure the age of the

41:35

Earth because these give great ages and you have to have a long age to justify evolution.

41:41

But there are a lot of other processes, in fact, many more which will give a young age with the same kinds of assumptions. As I say, you don't really hear too much about those.

41:49

Even those that do give an old age can easily be reinterpreted by making different assumptions to give a young age.

41:55

That's true with uranium dating as well as anything else. Now, this is quite a detailed subject and I don't have time to deal with it adequately, but just to give you an idea or two,

42:08

I think you can see this, that if you're gonna use some kind of a process, you have to have a certain system and you make measurements in that system.

42:15

This might be a uranium mineral, so you measure the amount of uranium, you measure the amount of lead. Of course, you have different isotopes, you have to take that into consideration.

42:23

Also, the intermediate products. And then with this system, you make assumptions about it.

42:29

You assume, for example, you have to assume that the rate at which this process has been operating has always been the same.

42:36

Or if it hasn't been, you have to know how it has changed so you can allow for that. You furthermore have to assume that this system has been a closed system through all these billions of years.

42:45

Because if it's been opened up so that some of the uranium could be selectively leached out by groundwater, say, and that does happen, can happen, does happen, or some of the lead could be brought in, then of course it's meaningless, so you have to know it's been a closed system all that time.

42:59

And furthermore, you have to know that when the system was originally formed at the beginning and it began to keep time, you have to know what the relative components were then, the initial boundary conditions.

43:11

You have to know, for example, in this uranium mineral that there was none of the radiogenic isotope of lead present. Otherwise, the amount of radiogenic isotope of lead won't tell you how old it is, if some of it was there at the beginning.

43:21

So you have to know that there wasn't any or else you have to know how much was there in order for it to be a valid time clock.

43:28

But now look at those assumptions. Always you have to have these three assumptions, at least, in any system. You have to know the initial boundary conditions, you have to know the rate, and you have to know it's been a closed system.

43:39

And if you look at those, though, you'll soon realize that never can we be sure about any of those. These are basically the same parameters.

43:47

Well, that's probably exactly what happened. But you see, then the question is quite different.

43:53

It's not a question now of how long it took this lead to decay from the uranium up here to give the age of this rock.

43:59

Rather, the question is how did the uranium and lead get together down here in the mantle? That's a different question altogether. And that has to do, you see, with the way in which the mantle was formed.

44:08

Has to do with the way in which the elements were formed when the earth was formed. It's a different question. Has to do with processes of nucleogenesis, the buildup of the elements from hydrogen on up, probably going through lead before it ever got to uranium.

44:21

And probably has to do something with the possibility of the creation of the earth and the elements. But that, whatever, at any rate, that's a different question.

44:29

It has nothing to do with the age of the rock. Now, the significant thing is that since that was found to be true in all the rocks of known age, why isn't it true in rocks of unknown age?

44:40

If we're gonna be using the scientific method, proceeding from the known to the unknown, present is the key to the past, and so on.

44:47

If we're gonna do that, why wouldn't that be a valid approach here? Because in all the rocks of known age, a uranium date, say, of a billion years really means an age of 1 ,000 years.

44:57

And how about over here in this igneous rock where we have a uranium mineral? And that's where we have uranium minerals. Ages are measured in igneous rocks by the uranium method.

45:06

And they were formed the same way by flow of a magma from the mantle, so they probably have the same problem exactly, so why wouldn't it be true there, too?

45:14

Probably, you see, all these uranium dates that indicate vast ages of time really have the same problem with them, and therefore, they really were formed fairly recently in time.

45:24

And you can show the same thing with potassium dating and rubidium dating, and with the others, radiocarbon dating.

45:32

Now, see, whenever I start talking about geologic time, I have a problem with chronologic time.

45:39

We don't have time enough to talk about it. And I know that I can't answer all the questions in this limited time, and I would just commend to you that you read some of the literature, and we'll try to deal with some of the questions maybe in the question period.

45:50

Let me just say a little bit about radiocarbon dating, because that's the one that most people are familiar with, I guess.

45:56

Radiocarbon, carbon -14, is a radioactive isotope of carbon -12, and it decays at the rate of about 5 ,730 years per half -life, back into nitrogen -14.

46:08

It's formed from nitrogen in the upper atmosphere by interactions with cosmic radiation, which comes in somehow from outer space.

46:16

It's a complex process, but anyway, radiocarbon is formed. Now, if you visualize a situation in the past when there was no radiocarbon, no cosmic radiation, maybe no atmosphere, the whole process just gets started.

46:27

Now, when it first begins to get started, the cosmic rays are turned on, and carbon -14 begins to be formed up here. It begins to decay, of course, as soon as it's formed, but it takes a long time to decay, so it builds up for a while before it begins to decay.

46:39

Now, it takes a long time, as a matter of fact. Something like four or five half -lives, 25, 30 ,000 years, before the formation would catch up with the decay, and there would be an equilibrium on a worldwide basis.

46:53

Now, when the method was first worked out by Dr. Libby 30 years or so ago, he pointed out that that was one of the assumptions in the method, that the radiocarbon content of the environment, worldwide, was in a steady state, with as much being formed as decaying.

47:09

But he did point out that the measurements that they had of the amount of radiocarbon in the environment did not correspond to that steady -state figure.

47:16

You can calculate what it should be, knowing the rate of decay and the rate of formation. It didn't conform, the best measurements they had indicated about 25 or 30 % deficiency, but he said, well, they must be in equilibrium, because, after all, it would only take 25 ,000 years to get it in equilibrium, and the atmosphere is much older than that, so our measurements must not be quite accurate enough yet.

47:35

Found to be in equilibrium, we'll go ahead and assume, and the radiocarbon method has a number of assumptions, of which that is a very important assumption.

47:44

Radiocarbon dates are calculated from an equation in which it is assumed that radiocarbon, on a worldwide basis, is in a steady state.

47:52

Now, there's some recent questioning about that, because of pre -ring dating and so on, but even apart from that, the total radiocarbon assay is less than it should be.

48:01

As time has gone on, since Libby's day, other measurements have accumulated, and this deficiency has been confirmed.

48:09

The measurements do not remove this discrepancy, but, as a matter of fact, augment it. Some writers even say it's as much as 50 % off, but at least 25 or so percent off.

48:19

Now, therefore, that means that the whole, on a worldwide basis, radiocarbon is still building up.

48:25

Now, since it would only take 25 ,000 years, roughly, to get it in equilibrium, that means that it hasn't been going on that long.

48:33

Now, it's still a good process. As a matter of fact, it becomes a much better process, because now, instead of applying only to an archeological site, it applies to the whole world, because it's a worldwide buildup.

48:45

And that means that we can use this method to date the age of the atmosphere, and therefore probably the age of the

48:50

Earth, assuming that the atmosphere is co -temporal with the Earth. Certainly, the formation of air -breathing creatures, to date those, maximum upper limit.

49:01

Anyway, you have now, instead of an equilibrium equation, you have a non -equilibrium differential equation for the buildup, radiocarbon, but that's not too bad.

49:10

This can be done, and it has been done. And then you have a process, which you can calculate back to time zero, when there was no radiocarbon, and the process got started.

49:21

And when you do that, you know what you get? You get the time zero, which means when the radiocarbon was first beginning to be formed, which means when the atmosphere was created, which means probably when the

49:30

Earth was created, is about somewhere between seven and 10 ,000 years ago. And all the other radiocarbon dates should be recalculated with this revised equation, which fits the facts better than the equilibrium equation.

49:43

And when you do that, of course, they'll all come down within that timeframe, and then, amazingly, you'll find that they correspond quite nicely with the dates in the biblical chronology.

49:53

Now, up to about 3 ,000 years ago, the equilibrium and non -equilibrium equations give about the same results, and that's as far back as the method has been checked.

50:01

But beyond that, the difference becomes very significant, and it's the non -equilibrium model which fits the facts better than the equilibrium model.

50:08

So it's a more scientific approach to radiocarbon dating. It fits the facts better, and it indicates that the age of the

50:14

Earth is on the order of several thousand years. Now, that brings up the question of other processes which will give a different age for the

50:23

Earth than billions of years. And as a matter of fact, there are dozens of them, many of them. Now, all of them involve uniformitarian assumptions.

50:32

If we have to go beyond the beginning of history, we have to make such assumptions. No way you can get a calculation without it.

50:38

So if we're gonna make uniformitarian assumptions with uranium dating, why can't we do it with radiocarbon buildup and with other processes?

50:44

We have to do this. Now, when you do that, you make uniformitarian assumptions on many different processes.

50:50

You'll find that all of them, with the exception of these three or four which have been interpreted in this specific way about uranium dating, will give ages much too young for evolution to be feasible at all.

50:59

Now, they'll all give different ages. Some of them will give a few thousand years. Some of them even give a few hundred years.

51:04

Some of them give a million years or seven million years. And the reason they give different ages is because they're all based on uniformitarianism and that isn't a valid assumption and they're all off by different amounts from uniformitarian assumptions.

51:14

But at least they all give ages much too young for evolution. Nothing, anything like a billion years. Now, many of these, and furthermore, they're better methods based on worldwide processes and longer periods of measurements than uranium dating and these others that seem to give long ages.

51:29

For example, well, I better just take one or two and then close.

51:36

I got started a little bit late, so you'll excuse me if I run maybe five minutes over. The decay of the

51:44

Earth's magnetic field is one which we are quite excited about because here we have a worldwide process and furthermore, we have a process which has been measured accurately for 135 years.

51:55

That's even before anybody knew about radioactivity. It's the best process we have in terms of length of measurements, of worldwide applicability, of accuracy of measurements.

52:05

Now, the Earth's magnetic field is decaying. Its strength is decaying at the rate of 1 ,400 years per half -life.

52:12

It's decaying fairly rapidly. Now, this was first worked out by Dr. Tom Barnes who is now president of the

52:18

Creation Research Society and who's professor of physics at the University of Texas, El Paso. Some of you may know

52:24

Dr. Barnes. He's an outstanding man in this field, formerly director, as a matter of fact, founder of the

52:29

Schellinger Research Laboratories of the university there. Conducted many, many experiments of high level in atmospheric physics, terrestrial magnetism.

52:38

He's written a widely used textbook, college textbook on magnetism. He knows this field. It was in one of his government projects that he ran across this data, or these data.

52:47

He found that data had been published for 135 years of the decay of the magnetic field integrated around the world and that you can plot it up and with a least squares analysis of the most accurate line, the line of best fit for these data, he found that the magnetic field was decaying exponentially at the rate of 1 ,400 years for each half -life.

53:07

Now, that means, you see, in another several thousand years, there won't be any magnetic field. It'll all be gone. That means more radiations and so on.

53:15

It'll be very, very bad as far as the life on Earth is concerned. But it also means that as you go back in time, the magnetic field was stronger.

53:23

The shielding effect was stronger and so on. Cosmic ray production would have been inhibited among other things.

53:30

But it also means as you go back in time with a stronger magnetic field, the force that generated that magnetic field has to be stronger.

53:38

Now, what's that? Probably electrical currents in the Earth's cores. The core circulating electrical currents.

53:43

Circulating currents generate magnetic fields. Very difficult to imagine anything else which does. There's no natural magnetism of the

53:49

Earth that would generate a magnetic field of this quantity. So probably a circulating current in the core.

53:56

But what causes currents to circulate in the Earth's core? Well, nobody knows about that. But at any rate, they're there.

54:03

Different theories have been proposed to account for them. But Dr. Borns points out a very interesting thing. He points out that the decay of the magnetic field is of such quantity that that decay in itself by a self -induction process is sufficient to generate these currents.

54:18

The currents themselves can be explained completely by the decay of the magnetic field, which has been measured. You don't need any extraneous process to account for it.

54:25

Once it does decay, then there's no way of storing and refurnishing that energy to start it up in another direction.

54:31

Be gone then. There's no place to store that energy and you have to have it if it's gonna build up again somewhere. But there's no evidence that that can be done.

54:38

So now as he goes back in time, he points out that the currents must have been greater, which means the heating effect must have been greater, flowing against resistance.

54:47

And you get back to a time when the heating effect would be much greater than there's any evidence for in the history of the

54:53

Earth. Matter of fact, he points out that if you go back as much as 10 ,000 years in geological time, that the strength of the magnetic field of the

55:01

Earth would be equal to the strength of the magnetic field of a magnetic star. It'd be so great, and that's not possible because stars have thermonuclear processes to generate magnetic fields and the

55:10

Earth doesn't. And furthermore, he points out if you go back several hundred thousand years, say about 500 ,000 years, the heating effect would have been so great as to vaporize the

55:19

Earth. And that's not even as far back as the first so -called paleomagnetic reversal about 700 ,000 years ago.

55:27

Now, his conclusion was, and so far, it has not been refuted. He's presented it to scientific societies.

55:33

It's been widely published now. People object to it. It doesn't appeal to them.

55:39

But the fact is they don't have any answer to it. The evidence is there, indicating, as he says, that the

55:44

Earth couldn't possibly be more than about 10 ,000 years old. Now, this is based on uniformitarianism, but that's the way with all such measurements.

55:54

Only here, the uniformitarian assumption is more reasonable because it only goes back a short period of time. It doesn't go back a billion years, only a few thousand years, and it's more likely that uniformitarianism would be valid for a short time than for a long time.

56:07

Besides, it's based on a worldwide measurement of over a long period of time. If there is such a thing as a good, reliable process on which we can use the uniformitarian assumption, that ought to be one.

56:17

Radioactive decay rates are not constant. That's been challenged recently and shown to be invalid. In any way, this assumption of the initial boundary condition is overwhelmingly against the validity of uranium dates, and so on.

56:30

So this, we think, is the best process available to measure the age of the Earth. But that's not the only one. There are many, many others.

56:35

You can take all the chemicals that are flowing into the ocean. These rates have been measured. Do you know how many chemicals are there?

56:41

What quantity is there? You can show how much of these chemicals have been precipitated out in the sediments, and so on.

56:48

You can make even allowance for some that might have been recirculated. You can make all kinds of reasonable assumptions. And in every case, you'll find that in every type of chemical, whether it's uranium or nickel or mercury or sodium or whatever chemical in the ocean, all of them will indicate the age of the ocean is only, well, is much less than a billion years.

57:05

Some of them, as I say, indicate a few hundred years. None of them will give great ages, and so on.

57:11

The rate at which meteoritic dust is falling on the Earth indicates that the Earth can't be old. The rate at which helium from uranium decay is escaping into the atmosphere also indicates the atmosphere is on the order of a few thousand years old, and so on and on.

57:25

One of our little publications, the Impact article in our Acts and Facts several months ago, had a list of 76 such processes, physical processes, based on uniformitarianism, which indicate the

57:36

Earth is young. Only a few indicate it's old, and these can easily be reinterpreted to fit a young age. So therefore, we suggest, entirely apart from what the

57:45

Bible may say about chronology, that the weight of the scientific evidence overwhelmingly is in favor of a young Earth.

57:51

The geological ages can be better explained in terms of this model of worldwide cataclysm. The various physical processes which can be used to measure the age of the

58:00

Earth overwhelmingly indicate that the Earth is far too young for evolution, and so on, so that all the way, as I say, we don't have all the answers, but the answers we do have seem to be overwhelmingly in favor of special creation, as well as the cataclysmic aftereffect of creation.

58:18

And therefore, we submit that it's a good model and ought to be considered in the schools and textbooks.

58:26

Why indoctrinate young people in only one model, uniformitarianism, evolutionism, randomism, naturalism, which is what all that leads to?

58:35

Why indoctrinate them in only one point of view, when the scientific evidence supports another point of view just as well, and we believe better?

58:41

Are we both out there on the table for everybody to look at, make their own choice then? And I think in the last analysis, it turns out to be interesting, and we think quite significant, that when all of these data are brought together, including the data on the age of the

58:55

Earth, it all conforms quite nicely to what the Bible said by way of revelation long ago.

59:03

And when they're all in, we believe it's gonna conform perfectly to what the scriptures have said all along.

59:10

Well, you've been a very patient audience, and we appreciate that. We're going to take a five -minute break again, and those who would like to stay for questions,

59:19

Dr. Gibson, I'd be glad to try to answer them if we can. Thank you. Let's see, who's first?

59:28

I don't, is this a question over here? Yes, sir. Okay. Is there any way to tell what the

59:36

Earth looked like? I mean, as far as looking at the Earth now, what did it look like before the flood?

59:45

Now, if you're talking about biblical data, there's some, and there's a little bit of geological data, but of course, not very much, because the flood was such a devastating cataclysm that it just wiped out the previous geography and civilizations.

01:00:02

Bible says in 2 Peter 3 .6, for example, the world that then was being cataclysmed with water perished, just completely devastated, so you can't really find much evidence of it.

01:00:13

But what you do have in geology, you do have evidence, for example, in the rocks of all the different ages, quote, from Cambrian on up until you get to about the mid -tertiary, that there was a worldwide warm, mild climate.

01:00:27

Find evidence of this in the types of fossils, the types of chemistry, and so on in the rocks indicate that the climate was warm everywhere.

01:00:34

So these at least indicate that the world as originally created was a very pleasant world. There was no inaccessible regions such as deserts and ice caps and so on.

01:00:44

It was a very wonderful world that God had made. Now, this is also implied in the Bible, when it says God made everything very good, that he created it, it was all good, and it was for man's use and benefit under God.

01:00:57

And it further suggests that there was a worldwide warm climate by referring to the waters above the firmament and the fact there was no rain.

01:01:05

Now, this is best explained, we think, in terms of the canopy theory. That's just a model, that's all.

01:01:11

It's not a dogmatic teaching. But the concept of the canopy as a vast blanket of water vapor up in the upper atmosphere, the waters above the firmament or above the expanse, above the atmosphere, as originally created, would have had a number of effects, including the effect of retaining the reflected incoming solar radiant energy.

01:01:32

Water vapor will do that. Disperse it around the world, make an equal distribution of temperature, relatively equal, so that therefore there would be no great differences of temperature from latitude to latitude or from summer to winter.

01:01:44

Consequently, there would be essentially a uniform climate all the time, and that would mean there would be no great air movements, such as we now have in the worldwide circulation of the atmosphere.

01:01:53

That would in turn mean that there could be no great rain systems, because these come from evaporation from the ocean, transportation inland, and so on.

01:02:01

Consequently, there would be no rain such as we know it, except a daily sort of a thing, where the difference of temperature day and night would produce an evaporation, and then a movement around the region and redistribution, precipitation.

01:02:16

The fact that there was no rain there also. And furthermore, it indicates that the shielding effect of not only the magnetic sphere, but the vapor sphere, vapor canopy, be much greater than we now have, and this would cut out radiation from space and therefore probably improve living conditions and especially longevity in the antediluvian world.

01:02:37

So the general picture is that the world before the flood was a very beautiful world, very highly designed specifically for man's need and enjoyment, but all that changed at the time of the flood.

01:02:47

In other words, there wouldn't have been great mountains or there wouldn't have been great mountains like the

01:02:54

Himalayas or deep oceans. Right, there were mountains according to the

01:02:59

Bible because it says the waters went up above the mountains, but they were not the same as our present mountains.

01:03:04

These consist very largely of sedimentary strata with marine organisms, and that means they must have been formed, we think, at the time of the flood, and then they were uplifted after the flood.

01:03:14

The 104th Psalm refers to that, when it says that when the waters stood above the mountains, in it

01:03:19

God's rebuke they fled, and then the mountains rose up, it says, and the basin sank down.

01:03:25

These refer then to great mountain building movements, great continental blocks thrusting up perhaps, and then consequently by isostatic adjustment, ocean basins opening up and waters draining off over the earth so that the flood waters then finally went into the ocean basins.

01:03:42

Also, at least from the time Adam was created until now, is there any way to tell how old the earth would have been as far as Bible chronology, and then when the creation of the scriptures ended from that time until now, is there any way to tell, to get a, oh,

01:04:03

I guess an exact dating of the earth? I'd say the only way to get an exact date is for God to tell you.

01:04:12

Yeah. Because you see, the world was so devastated at the time of the flood that any physical method that you might have used would have been completely unbalanced and upset.

01:04:20

But what about the Bible chronology? As far as the Bible is concerned, we do have chronological data in Genesis chapter one, which says that everything was made in six days up to man, and Genesis five, which says that from Adam to the flood was 1 ,656 years, and Genesis 11, which says at the time from the flood to Abraham was another about 200 and some years, or 400 years about.

01:04:41

Depends on whether you're talking about the birth of Abraham or the time he went into Canaan, but anyway, the total period from Adam to Abraham is around 2 ,000 years.

01:04:50

So Abraham is known to be dated in secular history about 2 ,000 B .C. So that's where the widely circulated figure of 4 ,000

01:04:58

B .C. for the creation of the earth came from. This is the Usher date. Archbishop James Usher worked this out based on the

01:05:05

Bible records. Now there is the possibility, of course, that the numbers have not been transmitted quite correctly.

01:05:12

The Septuagint translation gives a little different numbers than the Masoretic on which the King James and so on are based.

01:05:19

And there's the possibility that there might be some gaps in these genealogies, where when it says somebody begat somebody, this refers to his descendant rather than to his immediate son.

01:05:29

That's a possibility, although I don't think a very likely possibility in most cases, but it is a possibility.

01:05:36

You might have some gaps there, but they couldn't be very significant so that at the very outside, I don't think we could possibly stretch the biblical chronology more than about, oh, say six or 8 ,000 years.

01:05:47

And then the time before man, another six days on top of that. And of course the question of whether those days were literal days or not has to be discussed.

01:05:55

I mentioned that briefly in the first session. We believe that when you follow consistent biblical exegetical methods, as you would with other parts of the scripture, you can only justifiably interpret those days as literal days.

01:06:10

You don't interpret them at all. You take them to mean what they say. And the one reason is Exodus 20, 11, as I quoted, where God says, you keep, you work six days because God worked six days when he made heaven and earth and the sea and everything that's in them.

01:06:25

Are they the same kind of days apparently? So that means that the creation of the earth, according to the

01:06:30

Bible, must have been several thousand years ago. And this one other question, when the, at the time of the flood, where was the great amount of water heard that if it fell from the canopy in the form of rain, that if it had covered the whole earth, it probably wouldn't have been more than six inches deep.

01:06:50

In other words, to get the great amount of water to cover the whole earth and completely change it, where did it come from?

01:06:57

Well, of course the present water vapor would only cover the earth to about a half an inch or less than an inch if it were all precipitated.

01:07:05

So that couldn't account for a worldwide flood. What's there now? But if we have a much more extensive body of water in the upper atmosphere, the waters above the firmament before the flood, then this might've been some unknown amount.

01:07:17

And when it was precipitated at the time of the flood, it could have caused devastating worldwide destruction.

01:07:24

But the Bible also says not only that the windows of heaven or literally the floodgates of heaven were opened up, but also says the fountains of the deep burst open.

01:07:32

This suggests that below the earth's crust, there were great reservoirs of water. Under pressure, there were controlled fountains, you might say.

01:07:41

I think this is indicated maybe by the description in Eden, where it says a river went out of the garden, or went out of Eden to water the whole face of the ground.

01:07:49

It broke into four distributaries. Now, this river could not have been fed by rains because it says there was no rain on the earth in those days.

01:07:58

So it was fed by something from the subterranean areas. So probably there were reservoirs under pressure there.

01:08:05

So there were controlled fountains which fed the rivers of the antediluvian world. And then there was probably a recirculating system, a heat source in the depths to keep that, the hydrologic cycle, in other words, was energized in the antediluvian world by subterranean energizers in the post -diluvian world by atmospheric.

01:08:26

And the hydrologic cycle today with the circulation of the atmosphere due to the change in temperature and so on.

01:08:31

Well. Could it have come from volcanic eruptions and fissures and things like that? The fountains of the deep burst open.

01:08:37

That means that these fountains which were controlled now became uncontrolled. In one day, it says all the fountains of the deep burst open.

01:08:43

This would also imply volcanic action, right? So that not only would pressurized water be released, but great magmas released.

01:08:52

And this would correlate with the fact that all through the geologic column, we do have igneous rocks considerably.

01:08:58

Even in very recent, there were probably continuing volcanic activity of this sort, even after the flood. Using the present rate of decay of the

01:09:08

Earth's magnetic field can you estimate how long it will be before the magnetic field completely disappears? He asked how long would it be before the magnetic field disappear at present decay rates.

01:09:18

1400 years is the half -life now according to Dr. Born's best fit curve.

01:09:24

As I recall, I don't remember the exact, as I recall, he says something about somewhere between 5 ,000 and 6 ,000 years from now.

01:09:32

Is that right? 5 ,900 years is the number that sticks in my mind.

01:09:39

I'm not sure. I'll tell you, if you want to see that, one of our monographs which he wrote called the Origin and Destiny of the

01:09:44

Earth's Magnetic Field gives the entire study, including the mathematics on which it's based as well as the measurements.

01:09:55

Doctor, in the early stage of the human embryonic development gill slits appear and then disappear.

01:10:02

And this has been related to the man's evolution from the shark instead of the ape. Can you explain this?

01:10:08

Okay, now Barry said I would turn these things over to Dr. Gish if I could. I'm going to do this one for him. This idea of the recapitulation, the idea that the human embryo recapitulates its evolutionary ancestor as well as other animals that embryos supposedly recapitulated their evolutionary history.

01:10:31

The idea was first or mainly popularized by Ernst Haeckel back in the 1800s became the biogenetic law that embryos recapitulate their phylogenetic history.

01:10:46

Ontogeny or embryology recapitulates phylogeny or evolutionary history. Darwin said that the evidence for evolution from embryology was second to none.

01:10:58

Today, this has become a thoroughly discredited theory. It is known not to be true and actually it could not be true.

01:11:10

The modern, well, let's put it this way. You still see the high school biology books presenting this as fact.

01:11:17

You still find many college biology books. Although some would modify the theory today and say that the human embryo doesn't recapitulate its adult stages of evolution, it recapitulates the embryological stages.

01:11:34

Instead of looking like a fish, it looks like an embryo of a fish. Instead of looking like a reptile, it looks like the embryo of a reptile.

01:11:42

But it seems like evolutionists have learned something then since Haeckel's day, they can tell an embryo from an adult.

01:11:47

At least they've learned that much. They've changed their ideas that way. But we know today that it is not true.

01:11:55

Evolutionists have recognized this. Here's a paper published in Science Magazine, 9th of May, 1969.

01:12:03

The author is Walter J. Bok of Columbia University. Dr. Bok says the biogenetic law has become so deeply rooted in biological thought that it cannot be weeded out in spite of its having been demonstrated to be wrong by numerous subsequent scholars.

01:12:22

And there's other quotations I could use to show that evolutionists themselves realize it isn't true.

01:12:27

Now, let me give you some of the evidence. The human embryo never has gill slits. In the neck region of the human embryo, there's a series of bars and grooves that has a resemblance to other bars and grooves, which in the fish give rise to slits, gill slits.

01:12:43

But now in the human, these so -called gill slits never open into the throat, so they are never slits.

01:12:52

They never participate in respiration, so they're never gills. Now, if they're never gills and they're never slits, how in the world could they ever be gill slits?

01:13:01

There's merely a superficial resemblance here. They develop in other tissues, other structures, have nothing to do with respiration or slits or gills or anything.

01:13:11

The human heart does not go from one chamber to two chambers to three chambers to four chambers. It starts out as two chambers, becomes one, which then directly develops into four chambers.

01:13:21

The human brain develops before the nerve cord. The heart before the blood vessels.

01:13:27

The tongue appears in the human embryo before the teeth. All of this is out of order.

01:13:34

So for this reason and many others, this theory has been abandoned. Even the human embryo doesn't recapitulate.

01:13:41

It's embryological stages. Let me explain. In the embryo of the newt, which is an amphibian, the trunk segments two to five of that embryo gives rise to the four limbs.

01:13:58

In the lizard, which is a reptile, it is trunk segments six to nine that gives rise to the four limbs.

01:14:06

In the human embryo, it's trunk segments 13 to 18 that gives rise to the four limbs.

01:14:13

Now you see, the human embryo isn't recapitulating. It doesn't do the same thing that these other embryos do.

01:14:19

And this certainly weighs heavily against this idea of homologous organs. Here we have four limbs in the amphibian.

01:14:26

The reptile and the human is supposed to be homologous. That is, we have these similar structures because they have been derived from a common ancestor.

01:14:34

But these so -called homologous organs do not even develop from the same trunk segments in the embryo.

01:14:42

Furthermore, to clinch this argument about the human embryo in relationship to other embryos, in the early formation or development of the egg, there are three layers of tissue, the ectoderm, the mesoderm, and the endoderm.

01:14:57

Evolutionists and people used to assume that the bone from all animals developed, say, from the mesoderm.

01:15:06

And the epidermis, the nerves and so forth, always developed from the ectoderm. And the endoderm develops into the alimentary canal and other soft tissues and so forth and so on.

01:15:17

It was always the case. Now we know that that is not the case, that bones can develop from the mesoderm, or in some cases from other layers in other cases.

01:15:28

So the whole idea of homology plus the idea of recapitulation breaks down when we study this very carefully.

01:15:37

May I recommend for your study the Oxford biology reader called

01:15:43

Homology and Unsolved Problem by Gavin DeBeer, Sir Gavin DeBeer, Homology and Unsolved Problem.

01:15:52

All of these so -called evolutionary relationships break down when we study this kind of evidence.

01:15:59

And it's a marvelous little publication and devastates this idea of homology, for one thing, and embryological recapitulation.

01:16:08

Embryological recapitulation is a false idea that has so permeated biology, it's just hard to get out of the literature.

01:16:21

Dr. Gish? Yes. May I have your reference for Dr. Leakey's study on the forms of the australopithecines?

01:16:28

Mm -hmm. What about that, ma 'am? May I have the reference? The references for australopithecine?

01:16:36

I have them here in my briefcase. Could you see me afterwards?

01:16:42

No. I could supply them to you. There are a number of papers that he's published on the australopithecines in Nature magazine.

01:16:49

There's some reports to it in Science News. He had an article in the National Geographic on his so -called skull 1470, and I'll be very, very happy to give those references to you.

01:17:01

Yes. Could either of you comment on the steady -state universe theory and what bearing this will have on the creation evolution process?

01:17:09

Yes, yes. The question is, refers to the steady -state theory of the universe. The more popular theory of the origin of the universe is the

01:17:17

Big Bang theory. This was popularized by Gamow. He said that at one time in the past, billions of years ago, all of the matter and energy of the universe was crammed together in one huge cosmic egg of electrons, protons, and neutrons.

01:17:31

Now, nobody has the slightest idea where it came from or how it got there, but there it was.

01:17:36

And then for some other equally inexplicable reason, it became unstable and it exploded. And billions of years later, here we are, human beings with a three -pound brain with 12 billion brain cells and so forth and so on.

01:17:49

But that is the way that some people postulated the universe started.

01:17:56

Now, in order to avoid a first cause, Gamow suggested that we have an oscillating universe, that it explodes and goes way out almost to infinite expansion, and then for some reason, it snaps back.

01:18:09

And for another 70, 80 billion years, it's snapping back and gets back in this huge cosmic egg, and then it explodes again.

01:18:16

Well, some recent astronomers have published a paper in the Journal of Astrophysics, in which they said, in order for this universe to snap back, it'd have to have 10 times as much matter in it that it does.

01:18:28

It's impossible, it'd never snap back. It can never contract again. So then that gets us back down to the need for a first cause.

01:18:38

Well, now, Hoyle's idea, on the other hand, is the steady -state theory.

01:18:43

He says, matter is all continually coming into being from nothing. That out there in space, where we can't see it, of course, there's a certain amount of matter always coming to being just from nothing.

01:18:57

And after billions of years, enough of this matter will collect, and it'll finally condense and form new stars and new galaxies.

01:19:06

And so, if you look out into space right now, and if you could be somewhere looking out in this part of the space, five billion years from now, you'd see the same thing, because as galaxies go out, and new galaxies come in.

01:19:20

So he's postulating, from nothing, matter comes into being. Now, that goes against the first law of thermodynamics.

01:19:29

It tells us the total amount of energy and matter in the universe is a constant. But Hoyle just says, well, the rate is so slow, it can't be measured.

01:19:38

Now, finally, let me just point out this one thing, that that is really a preposterous idea.

01:19:43

It's incredible. The evolutionist says creation is incredible. The idea that God just created, that's incredible, unbelievable.

01:19:54

But he will believe something even more incredible. Hoyle postulates that this universe then came into being from nothing, on an effect without a cause.

01:20:07

Well, so, oh, excuse me. Yeah, I just wanted to say, at least the creationist does propose that he has an adequate cause,

01:20:13

God himself, yeah. Well, NASA or someone is planning to build a telescope on the far side of the moon in several years.

01:20:23

And they postulate that they'll be able to see maybe five billion light years into space. So what are they gonna see?

01:20:30

I think now, they do believe they can see five billion light years into space.

01:20:35

Now, what they are going to see any further beyond that, I do not know. Now, this idea, if we have an expanding universe, and the further planets and stars get out there, the faster they're going, you go out there far enough, that star will be going so fast that it's moving away at the speed of light.

01:20:59

So light from that star would never reach the Earth. Since the star's out there so far, it's going so fast that it's moving away at the rate of the speed of light coming in, so we just never see it.

01:21:13

So I guess you'd have to say you got out there far enough, you just wouldn't see anything anymore. All right,

01:21:20

I believe the next person over here on the left, young lady, uh -huh? Yes. What is your strategy in getting creation back into our education system?

01:21:34

What efforts are being made or what can be made to do that? Well, I think that, like the debate tomorrow, it's part of your strategy because you're reaching college -age people with the issue, and I think that probably you have an

01:21:51

Institute for Creation Research in order to get the issue in front of people, and what is your strategy in thinking on this matter?

01:22:00

What is our strategy? The Institute for Creation Research, our conviction on this matter is this, that it's better to go the educational route than to take the more direct route, the legislative and the legal.

01:22:17

Now, we believe that we have the legal right to require that creation be included in our schools along with evolution.

01:22:25

That would guarantee academic freedom and freedom of religion. To teach evolution exclusively and to exclude creation violates the separation of church and state.

01:22:38

It is bringing in a philosophy that is based upon humanism and evolution and excluding the theistic view of things.

01:22:46

Essentially, that's the result. So, but in spite of this, since legislation would force something on people, we believe that if we can get enough of this information out, if we can get basically young people, people that are in college now, if we can get them exposed to this evidence, if we can convince them at least whether we convert them to the creationist point of view, at least we can convince them after all there is a case for creation, that good science, a good educational process, academic freedom, freedom of religion should require the presentation of both sides.

01:23:30

So, this is the route we're trying to take. We're trying to at least convince the school boards, school teachers and educators in general that this is the best thing to do.

01:23:40

It's the only fair thing to do. Now, we may never be successful. I don't know. Some people want to force the issue, but I think it would be unfortunate.

01:23:50

But we want to try to put in the hands of as many parents as possible, as many teachers as possible, as many students as possible, the information that we've been giving today.

01:24:00

How can parents and teachers prepare and bring into the classroom the issue and the creation model?

01:24:10

Yes, how can teachers and parents help bring this into schools? One thing that the teachers can be aware of, that you have the legal constitutional right to teach creation in your classroom.

01:24:24

If the constitution guarantees every teacher the right to teach evolution, it certainly guarantees that same teacher the right to teach creation.

01:24:32

If you're going to teach one, you have the right to teach both. Now, you can teach that. You can present your students with both points of view.

01:24:39

Do not allow a principal, another teacher, a parent, or anyone tell you you cannot teach creation.

01:24:49

You can. And I would suggest that you help, that you and yourself, and you help other, yes, other teachers secure the literature that is available to present to put in their hands and in your hands as scientific support for creation.

01:25:08

Just brand new from our institute is this little publication, Introducing Scientific Creationism into the

01:25:16

Published School by Dr. Moritz. I would suggest you obtain a copy of this publication from our institute.

01:25:22

Do we have them here today? We don't have them today, it's just right off the press. This will give you some help, some direction and guidance.

01:25:31

There are groups in California and others who have surveyed their community, found that they've sampled their community, find that there's strong support for teaching creation along with evolution in the school.