DeeGeesLifeBlog ~ Life as Art ~ Or is it Heart?

One of the sure-fire ways of causing conniption-fits within the Darwinian science culture is to bring up the topic of a young earth versus old earth which, if nothing else, tends to foment a debate that could go on for hours, days – heck, weeks even! Which isn’t to say that one shouldn’t even venture there, since with such readily-available evidence as we have at our finger tips these days, it behooves us occasionally to remind ourselves of the truth versus fiction and let the chips fall where they may. So on this, the birthday of Dr. Thomas G. Barnes (August 14, 1911-October 23, 2001, deceased Professor Emeritus at University of Texas, and instrumental in the founding of ICR – see below) I thought it expedient to open up the topic yet again to enlighten myself as well as you the reader.

Professor Barnes contended that the earth’s magnetic field was decaying at an exponential rate, and that this proved the earth could not be more than about 10,000 years old. He also maintained that the half-life of the earth’s magnetic field was roughly 1400 years. His technical monograph for ICR, (Institute for Creation Research on Royal Lane in Dallas) Origin and Destiny of the Earth’s Magnetic Field, in 1973, became a creationist classic.

Let’s begin with this. The rotational speed of the earth (1000 mph) is gradually slowing down on account of the gravitational drag forces of the sun and moon. If the earth were really billions of years old, it should already be in tidal lock with the sun. Lord Kelvin posited this as a reason for a young earth and by his original calculation, or even a more modern one, the earth cannot be more than a few thousand years old.

After the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859, William Thomson (ie Lord Kelvin) saw evidence of the relatively short habitable age of the Earth as tending to contradict Darwin’s gradualist explanation of slow natural selection bringing about biological diversity. Thomson’s own views favored a version of theistic evolution sped up by divine guidance.[37] His calculations showed that the sun could not have possibly existed long enough to allow the slow incremental development by evolution — unless some energy source beyond what he or any other Victorian era person knew of was found. He was soon drawn into public disagreement with geologists,[38] and with Darwin’s supporters John Tyndall and T.H. Huxley. In his response to Huxley’s address to the Geological Society of London (1868) he presented his address “Of Geological Dynamics”, (1869)[39] which, among his other writings, challenged the geologists’ acceptance that the earth must be of indefinite age.[38] (see link below)

Back in 1835, in tangent with Thomson’s evidence-gathering and, later on with the work of Dr. Thomas G. Barnes, German physicist Karl Friedrich Gauss had made the first measurement of the earth’s magnetic dipole moment, and this has been monitored every decade since then with earth’s magnetism having decreased by 14%. From 1835 to 1965 results revealed a half-life of 1420.3 years. Thus, even 7,000 years ago the earth’s magnetic field would have been 32 times stronger than it is now. Anything beyond that would have vaporized.

At 20,000 years, this field would have generated enough Joule heat to liquefy the earth. At 1,000,000 years the earth would have had greater magnetism than all objects in the universe and would have vaporized. Thus, the earth could not possibly be older than 6,000 or 7,000 years. The over-all intensity of the field is declining at a rate of 26 nanoteslas per year. If the rate of decline were to continue steadily, the field strength would reach zero in 1,200 years.^[4] In the next two millennia, if the present rate of decay is sustained, the dipole component of the [earth’s magnetic] field should reach zero.^[5] 

Creationists have proposed that the earth’s magnetic field is caused by a freely decaying electric current in the earth’s core. (Old-earth scientists are forced to adopt a theoretical, self-sustaining process known as the dynamo model, which contradicts some basic laws of physics.) Reliable, accurate, published geological field data have emphatically confirmed this young-earth model.

This magnetic decay process is not a local process, such as one would find in uranium, but is global. It has been accurately measured for over 180 years, and is not subject to environmental changes since it is generated deep in the earth’s interior. If any fundamental planetary process ought to be a reliable indicator of the earth’s age, it should be our earth’s magnetic field – and that field indicates an upper limit significantly less than 10,000 years for the age of the earth.

One massive flaw with carbon dating of course, is that the amount of carbon is microscopic and the changes are hardly noticeable if the object is older than about 2 or 3 thousand years. So an object that is “2 million years old” has a similar carbon count to an object 3000 years old. It’s almost as if someone is laughing because he made it almost impossible to tell how old something really is. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Mt. St. Helens eruption for example, samples were blind-tested and came back scientifically-deemed to be “millions of years old!”

Trees uprooted by the eruption lie pointing away from the blast. Mount St Helens National Volcanic Monument, Washington

In the case of Mt. St. Helens of course, three separate eruptions produced a type of sedimentary layers hundreds of feet thick. One of these was a hurricane velocity deposit that produced thousands of thin laminations up to 25 feet thick [10,11,12]. The third eruption was a lava flow, which turned into a hot mud-flow as it crossed the Toutle River. This hot mud flow not only diverted the river, but carved a 17 mile long series of canyons (up to 140 feet deep) in a matter of hours. They call it the Little Grand Canyon of the Toutle River. [20,21,22]. And to this very day, neither the mass media, nor any popular “science” publications have told the public what happened. [23] (see links below)

As regards the majesty of God the Creator, it is rather brash of us mere mortals to even think we can access the very mind of God and assume we know what took place when He declared “Let there be light; and there was light.” Taking the very Bible as history and not fable, puts a whole different light and evidence upon God, creation, mankind and the universe, an element of teaching that was propagated in the higher schools of learning right up until the mid-to-late 1800’s when Darwinism (the true fable) began to be pushed as fact, when in fact, there’s absolutely no science to back up any of his false assertions.

Vastly different worldviews with very different conclusions – A young or very, very old Earth? Genesis says 6,000 years from creation with the Flood around 4600 years ago. Was the sedimentary strata laid down by a single worldwide deluge, or over eons of time as evolutionists claim?

Amazing how modern methods are beginning to show us just how accurate the Bible is.

Links to content:

Geomagnetism / Dr. Thomas G. Barnes / Young Earth Evidence / Geomagnetic Field Decay / Mount St. Helens Catastrophism / William Thompson aka Lord Kelvin / Depletion Of Earth’s Magnetic Field / Scientific Evidence for a Worldwide Flood / Origin and Destiny of the World’s Magnetic Field

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Soli Deo Gloria!