Television minister Pat Robertson said on the May 13 episode of CBN's 700 Club, "The truth is, you have to be deaf, dumb, and blind to think that this earth that we live in only has 6,000 years of existence."1 The eight staff doctorates at the Institute for Creation Research, and the many other biblical creation scientists who agree with their position, might like to know what they supposedly haven't heard, don't understand, and haven't seen.2
Robertson was responding to a letter that asked, "I've heard arguments from both sides of whether our Earth is 6,000 years old…Please explain further."1
But Pat's explanation sounded far more emotional than factual.
He said, "I think to deny the clear [geologic] record that's there before us makes us look silly." Of course the "us" refers to Christians in general, who, in Robertson's view, should accept millions of years as a scientific fact that geology has left in a "clear record."
Where in Earth's many rocks can we find this "record"? We may only have seen it in books that men wrote, not in rocks that carry no literal records. Do Earth layers really present as clear a "record" of millions of years as Robertson so assertively persuaded?
Robertson referred to an age of dinosaurs including a Jurassic Period, "radiocarbon dating," and oil as three icons representing millions of years. Good science refutes each.
For example, fossils confront the notion of a Jurassic "age of reptiles" in at least three ways. First, dinosaur fossils occur alongside many living creatures that belong to this current age, including palm, ginkgo, and sycamore trees; frogs, turtles, crocodiles and lizards; snails, clams, and fish; dragonflies, spiders, and lobsters; Tasmanian devils, shrews, and otters; ducks, loons, and parrots.3
Second, dinosaur fossils occur in sandwiched rock strata with little or no erosion between layers. Where is the evidence for either millions of years of slow and gradual deposition—which would have failed to preserve these creatures before they could fossilize—or of weathering—which would have eroded ruts and rills into the top of each layer? The strata's layer-cake appearance looks instead like many strata were deposited in rapid sequence.
Third, some dinosaur fossils still have original tissues, including animal proteins, inside them. This is consistent with tissue decay rate studies showing proteins can last thousands but certainly not a million years. Actual rocks exist that men have labeled "Jurassic," but those very rocks, and especially the Cretaceous layers above them, refute the notion of a dinosaur "age." They look like massive flood deposits.
And what about Pat Robertson's "radiocarbon dating"? Perhaps he would be embarrassed to learn that secular scientists do not radiocarbon-date dinosaurs since the method is in theory useless for dating anything older than 90,000 or so years.
Unfortunately, too many have turned deaf ears and blind eyes to the many secular reports of still-present carbon-14 found throughout the very rock "record" to which Robertson refers, including oil, coal, fossils, natural gas, and marble.4 Like the original tissue fossils, this positive evidence powerfully aligns with recent creation.
Robertson almost certainly meant to instead use the term "radioisotope dating," which secularists routinely use to estimate ages for igneous rocks that lie above or below dinosaur layers. Here again, too few have heard, understood, or seen the main reason why we know these methods don't work. When radiometric dating is used on rocks of known age (whose formation was observed) it most often gives highly inflated, erroneous age estimates.
Oil presents some major problems for the long-age view, too. First, the organic algae parts of which it is comprised should long ago have either been eaten by Earth's abundant oil-eating bacteria or have faded away as spontaneous chemical reactions converted it to carbon dioxide.5
Also, oil continues to push upward, being less dense than water. After only hundreds of thousands of years, Earth's oil should all have finished its vertical migration through rock strata, since all rocks are porous. But oil wells continue to gush with underground pressure. Last, how can one conceive of burying that much algae beneath that much sediment without a recent catastrophe of global proportions?
Pat passionately pleaded with 700 Club viewers, "There's no WAY that all this that you have here took place in 6,000 years."1 Oh, yes there is. All you need is a Creator, a flood, and His Word to know that. Good thing that good science confirms it, though.
References
- The 700 Club – May 13, 2014. CBN TV. Posted on cbn.com, accessed May 15, 2014.
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These are:
Clarey, Tim, Ph.D., Geology, Western Michigan University
Cupps, Vernon, Ph.D., Nuclear Physics, Indiana University-Bloomington
Guliuzza, Randy, M.D., University of Minnesota
Hebert, Jake, Ph.D., Physics, University of Texas at Dallas
Jeanson, Nathaniel, Ph.D., Cell and Developmental Biology, Harvard University
Lisle, Jason, Ph.D., Astrophysics, University of Colorado, Boulder
Morris, John, Ph.D., Geological Engineering, University of Oklahoma
Tomkins, Jeffrey, Ph.D., Genetics, Clemson University - Werner, C. 2008. Living Fossils. Evolution: The Grand Experiment, vol. 2. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press.
- Baumgardner, J. 2005. Carbon-14 Evidence for a Recent Global Flood and a Young Earth. In Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative, Vol. 2. Vardiman, L., A. A. Snelling, and E. F. Chaffin, eds. San Diego, CA: Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society, 369-373.
- Clarey, T. 2014. Rapidly Forming Oil Supports Flood Timeframe. Acts & Facts. 43 (3).
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on May 16, 2014.
