Referring to my earlier post about YEC arguments, someone sent me this
reference:
>> "The power of the repaired Hubble Space Telescope has been
>>turned to the search for Kuiper belt objects. Search fields were
>>taken by Anita Cochran and colleagues and are now undergoing
>>analysis. Their preliminary results suggest that they have
>>detected 50 to 60 objects down to diameters of 10 to 20 km, in
>>the first field that has been examined. More detailed analyses
>>of their images are eagerly awaited."~ Paul Weissman, "Bodies on
>>the Brink", Nature, April 27, 1995, p. 763
:But more recent work disputes that finding ÷ ÎSecond look finds no
:comet reservoirâ, Science News 149(25):395, June 22, 1996.
Has anybody read this? Comments?
>>> Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets
>>> come from an unobserved spherical 'Oort cloud' well beyond the orbit of
>>> Pluto,
>>Morton: If this guy would read either Nature magazine or Scientific
>>American he would know that it has been observed.
"If Morton had read less selectively instead of trying to justify his
himself, he would know that the Oort cloud has not been observed and
the Kuiper belt observations are debatable. But even if the Kuiper belt
is real, it would still need the Oort cloud to resupply it after tens of
thousands of years. The question is not whether the Kuiper Belt has
been observed, but whether it actually is the answer to the
evolutionist's age dilemma that they were desperately looking for.
An up-to-date review of comets has been written by the creationist
astronomer Dr Danny Faulkner, Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal
11(3):264-273, 1997. Danny sets out the status quo on the issue of the
comets and is still convinced that the short-period comets are a
powerful argument for a young Solar System and a young Earth. He deals
in far more detail with the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud than does Morton,
and he is a qualified astronomer which Morton isn't."
====
>>> 3. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
>>
>>These methods really give estimates of residence times (of mud and
>>sodium) rather than the age of the oceans. The salty sea problem is
>>dealt with in some length in Science Held Hostage: Whatâs Wrong with
>>Creation Science and Evolutionism, by Van Till, Young, and Menninga. Of
>>course one needs to know the rate of deposition (and its variations in
>>the past) and *all* mechanisms of removal for these estimates to be even
>>ballpark.
>>
>>> 4. Not enough sodium in the sea.
"That book by the Calvin College Compromisers was taken into account by
Drs Russell Humphreys and Steve Austin. In fact, Van Till et al. had
not done their homework, and had no data to explain how salt could be
removed. They had relied on atheistic evolutionists, and they had no
data either. Conversely, the assumptions in the article were as
favourable to long ages as possible, yet came up with ages far short of
billions of years. Has Morton actually read the Austin/Humphreys paper,
ÎThe seaâs missing salt: a dilemma for evolutionistsâ, Proceedings of
the 2nd International Conference on Creationism, 1990, pp. 17-31? Also
see Larry Vardimanâs monograph on seafloor sediments and the age of the
Earth, and ÎCreation in the Physics Lab ÷ Interview with Dr Russell
Humphreysâ, Creation 15(3):20-23, June 1993, online at:
<http://www.christiananswers.net/aig/creation/j93inter.html>"
====
>>Morton: This assumes an exponential decay of the magnetic field rather
>>than a cyclical oscillation of the field. It is like assuming that the
>>stock market can only go up. Why in 50 years, at the rate it has gone
>>up over the past 10 years, anyone who invested in the market will not
>>have to work-they will be fabulously wealthy. But of course the market
>>will go down and similarly, the magnetic field will reverse as it has
>>many times in the past.
"Morton canât have read the article properly, because it mentions rapid
reversals during the Flood, not just simple exponential decay. And
Humphreysâ model successfully predicted that reversals would be found in
lava which had cooled in days or weeks. This was a shock to
uniformitarians. Morton also confuses intensity (B) and energy (the
volume integral of B-squared). The energy is always decreasing, even
though the field reversed rapidly during the Flood."
====
>>The idea that the current decay can only be extrapolated back 10,000
>>years is somewhat misleading, even if we didn't know that the polarity
>>reverses itself periodically. The creationists use an exponential
>>function to extrapolate back in time, whereas they could just as well
>>use a linear function (we don't have enough data points to differentiate
>>the two) which would give an "age of the earth" of several hundred million
>>years, I think.
"Obviously there is a lack of thought here. Exponential decay is a
well-known phenomenon for currents decaying in resistance/inductance
circuits. Linear decay might look good on a graph, but itâs physically
absurd when dealing with the real world of electric circuits. Thomas
Barnes, who first pointed out magnetic field decay as a problem for
evolutionists, was a specialist in electromagnetism and wrote some
well-regarded textbooks on the subject. But most of his critics are
crassly ignorant of the subject.
See Dr Russell Humphreysâ article on the magnetic field at
<http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-242.htm> to see what modern
creationists really claim, instead of relying on straw-man arguments by
atheists and their theistic evolutionary fellow travellers."
=====
>>Morton: There are lightning bolts of very high temperature that have
>>been observed shooting UP from thunderstorms to over 80 miles high.
>>The temperatures in these sprites should provide sufficient thermal
>>energy for helium to escape from the earth's gravitational field.
"No calculations provided, and the helium retention point is unanswered.
For a mathematical/physical critique of scepticsâ arguments about helium
in the atmosphere, see David Malcolm, CEN Tech. J. 8(2):142-7, or Larry
Vardiman, ÎThe Age of the Earthâs Atmosphere: A Study of the Helium Flux
through the Atmosphereâ, Technical Monograph, ICR."
====
>>> Evolutionary anthropologists say that the Stone Age lasted for at
>>> least 100,000 years, during which time the world population of
>>> Neanderthal and Cro-magnon men was roughly constant, between one and
>>> 10 million. All that time they were burying their dead with
>>> artefacts.(23) By this scenario, they would have buried at least
>>> four billion bodies.(24) If the evolutionary time-scale is correct,
>>> buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 100,000 years,
>>> so many of the supposed four billion Stone Age skeletons should still
>>> be around (and certainly the buried artefacts).
>>> Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone
>>> Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, a few hundred years
>>> in many areas.
>>Morton: this is ridiculous. Has this guy never heard of DECAY?
"This is ridiculous ÷ has Morton never heard of special pleading? Sure,
some skeletons decay, but all four billion and accompanying artefacts,
many of which would have been buried as amply shown in the fossil
record?"
=====
>>Using his logic, there should be no place to bury anyone in Italy.
>>There were 25 million people living in Italy in 1861. There were 36
>>million in 1921. There were 50 million in 1971. Using an average life
>>span of 50 years over this time it means that by the end of 2021 114
>>million people should have been buried in Italy. If one goes back in
>>time to the Roman days I would estimate another 100 million people
>>giving a total since Christ of 214 million people.
"Of course, we know that the Romans often cremated bodies, unlike a lot
of cave men who definitely buried theirs. And of course, we have plenty
of bodies and artefacts in Italy. But they are lacking for the alleged
100,000-year stone age.
As for population numbers, the Encyclopľdia Britannica claims that by
the time of Christ, the worldâs *total* population was about 300
million. It apparently didnât increase much up to 1000 AD. It was up
and down in the Middle Ages because of plagues etc. But may have reached
800 million by the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in 1750 ÷ an
average growth rate of 0.13% in the 750 years from 1000 - 1750. By
1800, it was one billion while the second billion was reached by 1930 ÷
an average growth rate of 0.53% p.a. This period of population growth
cannot be due to improved medicine, because antibiotics and vaccination
campaigns did not impact till after WWII. From 1930 to 1960, when the
population reached three billion, the growth rate was 1.36 % p.a. By
1974, the fourth billion was reached, so the average growth rate was
2.1% from 1960 to 1974. From 1974 to 1990, when the mark hit five
billion, the growth rate had slowed to 1.4%. The increase in population
growth this century is due to fewer deaths in infancy and through
disease."
====
>>>The area of Italy is 301,000 km^2 so this is a dead population
>>>(or as we say in Texas, voters) density of 708 / square kilometer.
>>>Why are they not having trouble finding burial spots?
"708/km^2 = 1 body per 1412 m^2 ö you call this overcrowded? Anyway,
sometimes gravediggers do have problems from previous burials ö remember
ÎAlas, poor Yorick ·â?"
Responses by (Dr) Jonathan Sarfati
Research scientist and editorial consultant
Answers in Genesis, Australia
Note: I am not in contact with Dr Sarfati and I have never heard of him.
This was sent to me from someone who is arguing that anything other than
the YEC position is unbiblical.