General Science Questions and Answers

 

Questions Answered

• Why do creationists fight against science?
• If the earth is only 6,000 years old, how do we see stars billions of light years away?
• Doesn’t carbon dating prove the Earth is millions of years old?
• The number of fossils in certain areas of the world is enormous. How could earth have supported all those creatures at the same time?
• Is man evolving bigger and smarter?
• Was the earth ever a hot, molten mass like the textbooks say?
• How are diamonds, oil, fossil fuels and natural gas formed?
• How do you explain the formation of fine strata layers called varves, such as those in the Green River formation in Wyoming, which contains 20 million fine layers which represent 1 year each? Doesn’t this prove the earth is more than 6,000 years old?
• What about black holes?
• What about the Mars rock. Is/was there life on Mars?

Q:    Why do creationists fight against science?

A:    Your question has me confused. All major branches of science were started by creationists. There has never been one advancement in any field of science that the evolution theory has helped. The evolution theory is useless. I don’t know of any creationist who fights against science. I certainly love science and taught it for 15 years. Most creationists that I know love science and only fight against evolution. You may be confusing the evolution theory with science. Some think the two go together. This is a common mistake due to the intense evolution propaganda campaign of the last 50 years. It would help if you watch my videotape #4 for more on this. There has never been any evidence that any kind of plant or animal has ever been able to create itself or produce any other kind of plant or animal. We have seen thousands of changes within the created kinds but that is not evolution. Please don’t accuse me of being against science. I am only against the false teaching of evolution as science.

Q:    If the earth is only 6,000 years old, how do we see stars billions of light years away?

A:    This is one of the most commonly asked questions and deserves an honest answer. Below is first a short answer then a more thorough answer. There are three things we need to consider when answering the starlight question.

1.  Scientists cannot measure distances beyond 100 light years accurately.

2.  No one knows what light is nor that it always travels the same speed throughout all time, space and matter.

3.  The creation was finished or mature when God made it. Adam was full grown, the trees had fruit on them, the star light was visible, etc.

Let me elaborate on these 3 points.

First, no one can measure star distance accurately. The farthest accurate distance man can measure is 20 light years (some textbooks say up to 100), not several billion light years. Man measures star distances using parallax trigonometry. By choosing two measurable observation points and making an imaginary triangle to a third point, and using simple trigonometry, man calculates the distance to the third point. The most distant observation points available are the positions of the earth in solar orbit six months apart, say June and December. This would be a base for our imaginary triangle of 186,000,000 miles or 16 light minutes. There are 525,948 minutes in a year. Even if the nearest star were only one light year away (and it isn’t), the angle at the third point measures .017°. In simpler terms, a triangle like this would be the same angle two surveyors would see if they were standing sixteen inches apart and focusing on a third point 8.24 miles away. If they stayed 16 inches apart and focused on a dot 824 miles away, they would have the same angle as an astronomer measuring a point 100 light years away. A point 5 million years away is impossible to figure with trigonometry. The stars may be that far away but modern man has no way of measuring those great distances. No one can state definitively the distance to the stars. The stars may indeed be billions of light years away, but man cannot measure those distances.

Several other methods such as luminosity and red shift are employed to try to guess at greater distances but all such methods have serious problems and assumptions involved. For a more complex and slightly different answer to the star light question from a Christian perspective, see the book Starlight and Time by Russell Humphry available from www.icr.org.

Second, the speed of light may not be a constant. It does vary in different mediums (hence the rainbow effect of light going through a prism) and may vary in different places in space. The entire idea behind the black hole theory is that light can be attracted by gravity and be unable to escape the great pull of these imaginary black holes. No one knows what light is let alone that it’s velocity has been the same all through time and space. Since atomic clocks use the wavelength of the Cesium 133 atom as a standard of time, if the speed of light is decaying, the clock would be changing at the same rate and therefor not be noticed.

Third, the creation account states that God made light before He made the sun, moon, or stars. The rest of creation was mature, so starlight was probably mature at creation as well. I would ask the question, How old was Adam when God made him? Obviously he was zero years old. But how old did he look? He was a full-grown man. The trees were full-grown with fruit on them the first day they were made. The creation had to be that way, it would not work otherwise. Star’s and their light were made at the same time. The God that I worship is not limited by anything involving time, space or mater.

Finally, I would also like to point out that the evolutionists have no answer to the basic questions like; Where did the original matter space and energy come from for the stars? I suspect God built the universe so we would say "Wow!" When we see the stars we should be reminded of the glory of God not evolution. See Psalms 8.

 

Q:    Doesn't carbon dating prove the Earth is millions of years old?

A:    Let me first explain how carbon dating works and then show you the assumptions it is based on. Nothing on earth carbon dates in the millions of years, because the scope of carbon dating only extends a few thousand years. Willard Libby invented the carbon dating technique in the early 1950’s. He calculated the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere today (about .0000765%), and assumed there would be the same amount found in living plants or animals since the plants breath CO2 and animals eat plants. Carbon 14 is the radio-active version of carbon. Radiation from the sun strikes the atmosphere of the earth all day long. This energy produces radioactive carbon 14. This radioactive carbon 14 slowly decays into normal, stable carbon 12. Extensive laboratory testing has shown that about half of the C-14 molecules will decay in 5730 years. After another 5730 years half of the remaining C-14 will decay leaving only ¼ of the original C-14. It goes from ½ to ¼ to 1/8, etc. In theory it would never totally disappear, but after about 5 half lives the difference is not measurable with any degree of accuracy. This is why most people say carbon dating is only good for objects less than 30,000 years old.

Since sunlight causes the formation of C-14 in the atmosphere, and normal radioactive decay takes it out, there must be a point where the formation rate and the decay rate equalizes. This is called the point of equilibrium. Let me illustrate. If you were trying to fill a barrel with water but there were holes drilled up the side of the barrel, as you filled the barrel it would begin leaking out the holes. At some point you would be putting it in and it would be leaking out at the same rate. You will not be able to fill the barrel past this point of equilibrium. In the same way the C-14 is being formed and decaying out simultaneously. A freshly created earth would require about 30,000 years for the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere to reach this point of equilibrium because it would leak out as it is being filled. Tests indicate that the earth has still not reached equilibrium. This would mean the earth is not yet 30,000 years old! This also means that plants and animals that lived in the past had less C-14 in them than do plants and animals today. Just this one fact totally upsets data obtained by C-14 dating.

The carbon in the atmosphere normally combines with oxygen to make carbon dioxide (CO2). Plants breath CO2 and make it part of their tissue. Animals eat the plants and make it part of their tissues. When a plant or animal dies it stops taking in air and food so it should not be able to get any new C-14. The C-14 in the plant or animal will begin to decay back to normal C-12. The older an object is, the less carbon-14 it contains. One gram of carbon from living plant material causes a Geiger counter to click 16 times per minute as the C-14 decays. A sample that causes 8 clicks per minute would be 11,460 years old (the sample has gone through two half lives) and so on.

Although this technique looks good at first, carbon-14 dating rests on two simple assumptions. They are obviously assuming the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has always been constant, and its’ rate of decay has always been constant. Neither of these assumptions is provable or reasonable. An illustration may help. Imagine you found a candle burning in a room. You could measure the present height of the candle (say, seven inches) and the rate of burn (say, an inch per hour). In order to find the length of time since the candle was lit we would be forced to make some assumptions. We would obviously have to assume that the candle has always burned at the same rate, and the initial height of the candle. The answer changes based on the assumptions. Similarly, scientists do not know that the carbon-14 decay rate has been constant. They do not know that the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere is constant. Present testing shows the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere has been increasing since it was first measured in the 1950’s. This may be tied in to the declining strength of the magnetic field.

In addition to the above assumptions, dating methods are all subject to the geologic column date to verify their accuracy. If a date obtained by radiometric dating does not match the assumed age from the geologic column the radiometric date will be rejected. The so-called geologic column was developed in the early 1800’s over a century before there were any radiometric dating methods. Laboratories will not carbon date dinosaur bones (even frozen ones which could easily be carbon dated) because dinosaurs are supposed to have lived 70 million years ago according to the fictitious geologic column. An object’s supposed place on the geologic column determines the method used to date it. There are about 7 or 8 radioactive elements that are used today to try to date objects. Each one has a different half-life and a different range of ages it is supposed to be used for. No dating method cited by evolutionists is unbiased. For more information, see video tape #7 of the CSE video series on Creation, Evolution, and Dinosaurs; Bones of Contention by Marvin Lubenow, or Scientific Creationism by Henry Morris (all available from CSE).

Q:    The number of fossils in certain areas of the world is enormous. How could the earth have supported all those creatures at the same time?

A:    This question shows a common false assumption that many people make. They assume the earth today is the same as it has always been. Today’s earth is 70% under water. There are scriptural and scientific indications that the pre-flood world had greater air pressure, higher percentages of oxygen and carbon dioxide, more land and less water and a canopy of water to filter out the harmful effects of the sun. This would cause there to be many times more plants and animals on the earth than there are today. The added air pressure would diffuse more gasses into the water and support a much greater fish population and aquatic plant life per cubic mile also. II Peter 3 tells us that the scoffers in the last days will be willingly ignorant of how God created the heavens and the earth. They would also be ignorant of the flood. These two great events must be considered before making any statements about the conditions on earth today. Only about 3% of the earth today is habitable for man today. The rest is under water, ice, deserts, mountains, etc. If the earth before the flood were say, 70% habitable, it could have supported a huge population.

The vast amount and world-wide distribution of fossils shows the flood was global and that God hates sin enough to judge the entire world.

Q:    Is man evolving bigger and smarter?

A:    I believe that before the flood in the days of Noah people were much bigger and smarter than the average person is today. The Bible says they were living to be more than 900 years old. I show some of the evidence for giant humans on my video tape #1. As for smarter, you could learn a lot in 900 years! Plus, Adam came from the hand of God fully programmed with language capacity and the ability to classify or sort items quickly (he named all the animals in one day). Adam was around for over half of the time before the flood came, so his great knowledge could be spread throughout the world.

In the last 400 years there has been a great increase in accumulated technology. This is not the same as wisdom or intelligence. We can have a computer because thousands of men before have invented various parts and ideas that can be put together. There is no evidence that modern man is smarter than ancient man. I think the opposite is true. Many of the ancient structure indicate greater intelligence in solving problems in a low-tech age.

As for man getting bigger, there has been an increase in average size over the last few hundred years in industrialized countries due to improved diet, sanitation, medicine etc but this is not to be confused with evolution. Also the trend in bigger people is not proof of long-term growth patterns. If man today is say 8 inches taller than average man during the American Revolution 200 years ago it obviously would not prove that man was 80 inches shorter 2000 years ago or 800 inches shorter 20,000 years ago!

Q:    Was the earth ever a hot, molten mass like the textbooks say?

A:    Evolutionists teach that the earth was a boiling hot, molten mass that slowly cooled down over millions of years. Well, the Bible says in Genesis chapter 1 that "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth…and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." So the surface of the earth was covered with water; it could not have been a hot, molten mass.

There is scientific evidence to support the Biblical account. Robert Gentry of Knoxville, Tennessee, does amazing research on radio-polonium halos in granite rock. Polonium is a rare element that is radioactive; it breaks down or decays like uranium. But polonium only lasts a few minutes. As it breaks down, it sends off little particles that fly a certain distance. An analogy would be a hand-grenade exploding under water that produces a sphere of fragments in the water that only lasts a fraction of a second before it collapses. Different elements have fragments that fly different distances, each radioactive element has a particular "signature" (how big a circle it can make in the rock as it decays like a more powerful hand grenade would produce a bigger sphere in the water). Radio-active polonium, when it decays in a solid rock, makes a perfect sphere as it decays because all its fragments fly about the same distance from the center. If it decays in solid rock, the circle is preserved. But if it decays in a hot molten rock, the circle disappears. All over the world radio-polonium halos exist in granite, indicating the earth was never a hot, molten mass. See Robert Gentry’s book Creations Tiny Mystery, available from ICR (619) 448-0900, for much more on this subject.

It is also interesting that Gentry’s research was published in many major science magazines until someone realized that it was proving the big bang theory to be a big dud. The censorship of his valuable material by mainstream science magazines is incredible but predictable. Evolution is a very carefully protected state religion in this humanist world today.

Q:    How are diamonds, oil, fossil fules, and natural gas formed?

A:    Coal comes from massive amounts of trees and plant matter that has been changed by tremendous heat and pressure. Oil and natural gas form from fish, reptile, and animal matter under similar heat and pressure conditions. The most logical time for coal, oil and gas to form was during and after the world-wide flood, when enormous amounts of animal and vegetable matter underwent mass burial under the incredible destruction and pressure of the flood waters and the sediments.

Diamonds are highly pressurized, pure carbon gems. (Superman used to make them from coal all the time.) Most diamonds appear in "blue ground," in or near the neck of an extinct volcano where magma erupted. The high pressure of volcanic activity could have formed diamonds. Many may have formed when the "fountains of the deep" were broken up.

Q:    How do you explain the formation of fine strata layers called varves? Such as those in the Green River formation in Wyoming which contains 20 million fine layers which represent 1 year each. Doesn’t this prove the earth is more than 6,000 years old?

A:    This question assumes that each of these layers is annual, and this is obviously not the case. Numerous experiments have been done on the formation. You can take a section of Green River formation and grind it to powder, drop it into moving water and it will resort itself into many fine layers. It has been shown that the layers are not annual at all. There are places in this formation where over 1500 layers in some areas and only 1000 in others, all between the same to ash layers called "event horizons." See Creation Magazine June-Aug. 1997. This subject is dealt with in great detail at the Institute for Creation Research (619) 448-0900, or you can contact their web page at www.icr.org .

Q:    What about black holes?

A:    In order to escape the gravitational pull of the earth, a rocket must go 17,000-18,000 miles per hour. If it goes less than this it will fall back down. This speed is known as the escape velocity of earth. If a planet has stronger gravity, the escape velocity will be even greater.

The idea behind a black hole is the idea that if enough mass is in one location, the gravity would be so great that even light cannot escape. This of course is assuming that light can be effected by gravity. No one has ever seen a black hole since no light could escape one if it existed.

The problem black holes are supposed to fix is this: if the big bang theory is true, the matter should be evenly distributed in space. Since matter is not evenly distributed in space (we have clumps of matter called galaxies then zillions of miles of nothing between) the believers in the big bang theory are trying to explain why. They are trying to say," "There is matter in between the clumps but we can’t see it because it is in black holes." Actually they are arguing from a lack of evidence not from evidence. This is a poor position to be in when trying to prove your case in a court of law.

I don’t know if black holes exist or not, but their existence is not proven.

Q:    What about the Mars rock. Is/was there life on Mars?

A:    Life does not exist on Mars. The purpose of the Mars rock hype a few years ago was to help NASA get its grant money through Congress. They must find something important with all the billions they spend. The rock had been found 7 years earlier near the South Pole. It arrived 13,000 years ago, according to NASA: In 13,000 years it could easily have become contaminated with Earth life. Or, in passing through the 200 mile thick Earth atmosphere, the rock could have become contaminated.

Also, the rock’s supposed Mars origin is suspect. Suppose we reduce Earth to the size of a 4 inch tomato and Mars to the size of a 2 inch tomato; using this scale, the tomatoes would be 2,000 feet apart, over one-third of a mile at the closest point of their orbits. Suppose that you had to shoot the Mars tomato so that one piece of it landed on the Earth tomato, without leaving a dent in the Mars tomato. Highly unlikely, don’t you think? Mars has no giant crater that would indicate it had been hit with enough force to knock a fragment all the way to earth. The whole purpose of the highly publicized Mars find was to push a NASA funding grant through Congress. It worked. For much more on this topic see the book That Their Words May Be Used Against Them, by Dr. Henry Morris.