 Fossil find areas connecting across landmasses is among the evidence in support of continental drift. Theevidence against a recent creation is overwhelming. With the possible exception ofFlat Earthism, there is no greater affront to science thanYoung Earth creationism (YEC). This article collects evidences that place alower limit on the age of the Universe beyond the 6,000 to 10,000 years asserted by most Young Earth creationists (YECs) and theliteralistUssher chronology. All of this evidence supportsdeep time: the idea, considered credible by scientists since the early 1800s, that theEarth (and the Universe) is millions or billions of years old. Modern science accepts that theEarth is about 4.54 billion years old and the entireuniverse is around 13.77 billion years old. These limits usually take the form: "Because we observe [X], which occurs at rate [Y], the universe must beat least [Z] years old". There are three standard creationist responses: First, creationists assert that current rates (Y) are different than past rates. It ispossible that these rates changed — but underuniformitarianism, which is necessary for science to function,we must assume that rates did not changeunless there is evidence for this change. Second, creationists appeal to theOmphalos hypothesis and argue thatGoddeceptively created the world to appear old. This is anunfalsifiable hypothesis, and is unscientific. Third, creationistsignore the evidence anddeny that [X] exists altogether or assert thatbelief in a Young Earth is based on faith, not science. All of these answers are critically flawed. These ages weren'tjust made up — or, worse,accepted to "give evolution enough time". Each was concluded from a range of experiments and observations made across multiple disciplines of science, includingastronomy,geology,biology,palaeontology,chemistry,geomorphology andphysics. For YEC to be true, each of these fields would have to be incorrect aboutalmost everything. Some of these reported ages have indeed been revised based on new evidence (sometimes larger, sometimes smaller), butnever to theorders of magnitude required by YEC. Moreover, these dating methods arenot mutually exclusive: where their range, accuracy, and applicability overlap, the dates they produceagree with each other. (For example, all dating methods for theage of the Earth agree on a 4.4-4.6 billion year-old world.) This is important especially because YECs regularly claim thatradiometric dating is unreliable — yet radiometric dating is unnecessary to prove an old universe, because we have many methods of dating at our disposal. What follows is40 independent reasonsnot to believe in a young Earth: |
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