Age of the Earth part2 - 2526

SPEAKER 1 Welcome to Science Conversations. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Is there a problem with radiometric dating? Joining me to discuss part two of this topic is Dr. John Ashton. Welcome once again, Dr. John. SPEAKER 2 Hello, Kaysie. SPEAKER 1 Dr. John Ashton has written a book entitled Evolution Impossible 12 Reasons why Evolution Cannot Explain the Origin of Life on Earth. And we'll be discussing a bit more from chapter nine in this program. So in our last session, we were talking all about radiometric dating and how that fits with continental and mountain erosion rates. And the discrepancy really, that there's a big gap in the numbers in terms of what it suggests about the age of the Earth. And obviously, if there's a lot of sediment that's going off the continents, where does that going? I mean, it's obviously heading to the ocean. So what does the evidence look like in terms of where that sediment has gone? SPEAKER 2 Yes. So again, we've got these radiometric dates that are saying that the continents are very old, up to two and a half billion years, that the different layers of fossils go back to the Cambrian, 500 or 600 million years old, and these layers are all sitting there. And yet we talked about how erosion rates clearly showed the continents would erode away in the order of 10 million years. This sort of thing, so vastly different to the radiometric ages, we're out by many orders of magnitude. And, and so the issue is, then, where did all this sediment go? Now, there's another problem on top of this, that, for example, if we look at, say, the Grand Canyon, the rocks at the top of the Grand Canyon are dated about 240 million years old. So we have another problem then is where did all the material go that was supposedly sitting on top of those rocks? And if it was a road away, again at the, at the, at the slow rate, for them to survive that long, you know, there had to be kilometers of sediment just about sitting on top of those rocks. So totally unrealistic view. Now, it's very interesting that the biblical flood model, we have a model where the Earth was essentially covered with water during the flood. So the sedimentary rocks largely all over the surface of the Earth, and that these rocks. Then there was various plate movements. We had the mountains lifted up, the rocks lifted up. Right. So that's why, for example, we find fossil whales on mountains in Peru, and, and these sort of things. So clearly these mountains have been lifted up. The Himalayan mountains, for example, we find fossils, shellfish and so forth, right up on the, the tops of these mountains. And so we've got this, this Clear problem of that. The flood model fits really well with the main evidence that people can cling to to support their evolutionary model of the require long ages for evolution is this radiometric dating results. But we've shown, and we discussed in the last talk, that, okay, erosion rates clearly conflict with this, but also the rate at which material is deposited on the bottom of the ocean and the thickness of that material. So when we actually look at the thickness of the material on the bottom of the ocean, we find, well, that material would have been laid down at the current rates of erosion, washing material into the, into the ocean and so forth, and dust and so forth coming in. People do these calculations and they get values in the order of about 30 million years. There's several estimates that have been done and they all come in around about 30 million years. And you say, well, that's a lot older than the 6,000 years. Well, we need to remember that this is looking at today's erosion rates. If we have catastrophic events, then that can be much larger in the past and so forth. And so this again is consistent evidence when we look at the thickness of the sediments that have been washed in and deposited again, all these sediments would be deposited in the order of about 30 million years. And this is consistent and very, very good evidence that we have today and again reported in the scientific journals, this is where this, this data is coming from. So again, 30 million years is major conflict with the 500 million years, two and a half billion years that the continents are supposed to be older and 500 million years for the fossil record. So we have these, remember, these dates that are worked out are worked out now on the basis of radiometric dating. Also, the very early measurements that were based on sedimentation rates were based just in some localized studies and really obviously weren't reflective of the much accurate data that we've been able to ascertain, you know, since, you know, the last hundred years and this sort of thing. And so this is very important. I think one of the other areas that is quite spectacular is the rate at which volcanic material has been deposited onto the surface of the Earth. And I think this actually also provides really, really powerful evidence that the radiometric dating methods are wrong. And so, for example, it's been estimate, estimate from data from volcanic eruptions that were recorded between 1940 and 1980, that the present time volcanoes around the world release on average about 1 cubic mile or 4 cubic kilometers of material onto the Earth's surface each year. So that's a cubic mile per year. And we know that There are a huge number of now dormant volcanoes. You know, I mean, just gotta walk around the coast here and you see old dikes and sills and, you know, the remnants of many old volcanoes that are now extinct. And so we know that in the past volcanic activity was much, much higher than it is today. And also some volcanoes have emitted huge volumes. For example, the Tambora volcano in Indonesia, when it erupted in 1815, is estimated to have ejected in the order of 25 to 70 cubic miles of material. Lake Taupo in New Zealand released in the order of about 260 cubic miles. Yeah. Or over a thousand cubic meters cubic kilometers, rather. Yeah. SPEAKER 1 To be distributed over the surface. SPEAKER 2 Yes, yes. So if we assume just the average, modest average rate of 1 cubic mile of material being ejected each year and the continents are really two and a half billion years old, then we'd expect two and a half billion cubic miles of material to have been ejected over this time. And if you work that out on the base of the surface of the Earth, that will give you a thickness of a bit over 12 miles or around 20 km, thickness of volcanic material all over the surface of the Earth. But when we actually look at the actual measurements that we make as to how much material has been ejected onto the surface of the Earth over the, you know, the ages of the Earth, then it works out at about 34 cubic million cubic miles of material, which again gives us a date of about 34 million years on that average value, which is way less again than the two and a half billion years. 34 is way smaller. So again, we've got a huge difference here. And although that is a lot older than the, a lot more than the biblical view, we need to remember again, there was much more volcanic activity in the past. We've had examples of volcanoes emitting, you know, tens of, maybe even over 100 cubic meters of cubic miles rather. It's such a large material, it's easy to make a mistake. But there's a huge amount of material that could have been emitted in a short period of time, and that brings that activity down. And furthermore, we have that evidence from the biblical account where the Bible talks about the fountains of the deep opened up and whether this refers to both water fountains coming up, but also volcanic material as well. We know there was a massive disruption of the surface of the Earth during the flood, and that could account for the massive amounts of this material being deposited very rapidly over the surface of the Earth. The same with the sediment, with the sedimentary layers that have been laid over. We know, there were massive catastrophic conditions over the Earth that buried all these animals and so forth. And that's why, for example, we find, you know, for example, molds of rhinoceroses trapped in lava and this sort of thing. That's amazing. So we forget that, you know, there was massive volcanic eruptions occurring at this time and. And the ash layers and these sort of things have formed at that time. So, again, the main point is, though, that the data that we can go out and measure now, we can drill down, we can look at the rates of activity, and this sort of thing paint a very, very different picture in terms of timescales to the radiometric dating ages that are dated on millions and millions of years. And I think one of the other fascinating things is that I'll talk about in one of our later chapters is that when we actually radiometrically date historical lava flows that we know, say erupted, say, 200 years ago or 50 years ago, these sort of things, and actually radiometrically date them, we get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of years for these rocks that we know are only, you know, 50 or 200 years old or whatever. And so, again, there's a major, major conflict there when we actually try to validate the radiometric dating methods by measuring rocks that we know. So I think we have clear evidence from erosion rates, from sedimentary rates, and from the rate at which volcanic material is being ejected onto the surface of the Earth, that these hundreds of millions of years that are ascribed to the fossil record, that the theory of evolution needs can't be correct. And when we look at this and the evidence that points to these very, very short ages, there's not enough time for evolution. There's no possible way that evolution could have occurred in those very, very short times. And so here we have fundamental prima facie evidence that the theory of evolution cannot really be the explanation for life on Earth. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. Powerful things to consider and definitely, I think, evidence that should be discussed more freely to help us unpack these questions of what really has gone on. What really does the big picture, not just one viewpoint, but what does the big picture of all the accumulation of evidence together show us? Because, really, to see a true picture of the past, all of the evidence should be converging if the idea is true. SPEAKER 2 That's right, yeah. And what we see is that in actual fact, the evidence is converging more and more to the biblical account of creation and a global flood years ago. Yes, very much so. SPEAKER 1 Very interesting. Thank you for sharing. And we have more to talk about in the next section. So next time we're going to continue to look at the question, Is there a problem with radiometric dating? Be sure to join us.