A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot Be 6,000 Years Old

I am hoping my book A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot Be 6,000 Years Old (published by Dorrance Publishing) will be of interest to skeptics and atheist readers of this magazine. This book is not only for Christians but also for those seeking the truth and who object to fake science. It gives evidence that Earth and the universe cannot be 6,000 years old and that a worldwide flood never happened—the viewpoint of flood geologists. It admits that atheists have good reasons to reject the wild speculations that some fundamentalist Christians (young-earth creationists) have required for being good Christians. In my knowledge as a Christian of how Jesus lived, he would accept atheists and skeptics with open arms because—like atheists and skeptics—he was extremely critical of hypocrites (Matthew 23:13). Moreover, one of his disciples was even a skeptic (Thomas the doubter). At any rate, I have found atheists not to be hypocrites but good moral people and to have many words of wisdom, speaking the truth. A couple of atheists have given me great help when I have sought their advice.

In support of my objections to the pseudoscience promoted by young-earth creationists, Skeptical Inquirer earlier published three of my articles exposing such pseudoscience as espoused by the creationist organization Answers in Genesis: “Twenty-One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened” (March/April 2018); “Response to Ken Ham and YouTube Comments by Andrew Snelling” (July/August 2018); and “Biological Reasons Young-Earth Creationists’ Worldwide Flood Never Happened” (September/October 2018).

The discussion of topics in these three articles has been further expanded in this new book to include the following eleven other topics.

The evolutionary history and origin of the Hawaiian Islands shows that the coral growth in the Kure atoll at the bend where the Emperor Seamount Chain extends north of the Hawaiian Ridge required at least 35 million years to form. The more than 30,000 feet of lava flows that extend from the ocean floor to the top of the volcano Mauna Kea in the main island of Hawaii could not have been erupted and deposited in 4,500 years.¹
There is evidence that radiocarbon dating can be applied to carbon-bearing samples from the biosphere with ages up to 30,000 years and to samples up to at least 50,000 years with increasing error bars.²
Polonium halos in biotite mica requires millions of years to form. The granitic igneous rocks in which they are found must first be injected into the earth’s crust as magma and then cooled and crystallized as solid rocks. This must have taken place over millions of years before these rocks could be deformed to allow polonium halos to form by diffusion of radioactive polonium and radon atoms into biotite where the halos are found.³
The evolution of apes and humans, plants (tree ferns, lycopods, cycads, Lepidodendron, and horsetails), and animals (cats, birds, and elephants) could not possibly have taken place in a scant 6,000 years.
The origin of oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere prior to the time in which multicellular life could form is not mentioned in Genesis in the Bible.⁴
Evidence shows that a single glacial ice age, lasting less than 700 years, did not occur after Noah’s flood 4,500 years ago as claimed by fundamentalists. The present ice occurred during the Pleistocene, with four glacial periods over the past 400,000 years.⁵
The chlorine ion in the world’s oceans is a component of salt deposits (sodium chloride, NaCl). These deposits occur on four out of the five world continents and in many different geologic periods. The Bible indicates only one period of drying and evaporation at the end of the flood that would produce salt deposits. The accumulation of chlorine ions in the world’s oceans results from a residence time of at least 100 million years.⁶
The formation of myrmekite (the vermicular intergrowth of quartz in plagioclase feldspar) in deformed plutonic igneous rocks require millions of years for emplacement, cooling, and crystallization in the earth’s crust before deformation of the solid rocks can occur. This allows chemical replacement processes that produce the myrmekite in recrystallized rocks of different mineral and chemical compositions.⁷
The supposed intelligent design of life in 6,000 years instead of during evolutionary processes over billions of years. Intelligent design (ID) is a model suggested by young-earth creationists of how each species of life is created by a supernatural being.
The Precambrian history of the earth includes almost 90 percent of its history, but according to young-earth creationists, all this history occurs on day three of the Genesis week.⁸
A local large flood possibly occurred in Mesopotamia in biblical times.⁹

A Christian Geologist Explains Why the Earth Cannot Be 6,000 Years Old contains many color images of geologic features that cannot have been produced during a year-long flood. They include the following eight items:

Glacial grooves and striations on sandstones in the Sahara Desert must have formed by erosion of continental ice many thousand feet thick flowing from the South Pole. In the flood geology model, this would have to have happened during Ordovician time in less than a month during the early part of Noah’s flood. It would then have had to melt away before overlying younger Silurian sedimentary rocks were deposited.
Raindrop prints on sand or mud (shale) of Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian, Mississippian, Permian, and Triassic ages could not have occurred if all sedimentary rocks were deposited under water during Noah’s flood.
Quartz geodes (composed of silica as crystals lining cavities in limestone) could not have formed simultaneously out of Noah’s flood waters. Calcium and carbonate ions form calcite crystals in the limestone but could not have simultaneously dissolved large holes in the limestone in which the quartz crystals could grow and line the hole.
Coccoliths (algal fossils containing calcium carbonate support structures) exist in Cretaceous chalk beds more than 350 feet thick in the White Cliffs of Dover. These chalk deposits would have required more than the year of Noah’s flood to form because (a) these plants require sunlight, (b) such a thick layer of plants floating in Noah’s flood waters would prevent the coccoliths a few feet below the ocean surface from receiving any sunlight, and (c) it would be impossible to have enough calcium dissolved in Noah’s flood waters to make so many (trillions and trillions) of these coccoliths in the one year of Noah’s flood.¹⁰
Radiolarian fossils consist of silica skeletons and occur in a 14,000-foot-thick layer on the Pacific Ocean floor. These creatures require sunlight to exist, and there could not have been sufficient silica dissolved in the ocean waters to make such a thick layer in the less than 4,500 years since Noah’s flood.¹¹
Cross-bedding in sandstones with angles of dip greater than thirty degrees are found in the Navajo and Coconino Sandstones but only in desert dunes. Desert dunes could not have formed during Noah’s flood.¹²
Clay layers in shale deposits interlayered with volcanic ash layers cannot have been deposited by flood waters moving at hurricane or tsunami speeds without mixing the settling clay and ash particles. Neither could more than 3,000 feet of clay particles in the Cretaceous Mancos Shale be deposited and capped by a thick sandstone layer that has river channels that cut down into the shale and contain fossil tree trunks. Noah’s rushing flood waters would have scattered these tree trunks instead of depositing them in narrow channels.
Cetaceans (including whales, dolphins, and porpoises) and sea reptiles have similar body shapes and ecological marine habitats. Their fossil remains could not have been separated from each other by Noah’s flood waters if both animal types were living at the same time during the year of the flood.

In addition, I have forty-nine articles on my website Articles in Opposition to Creationism¹³ that might be of interest to skeptics and atheists; the following four articles should be of particular interest.

“New Discoveries about Stonehenge vs. Flood Geology”¹⁴
“Fountains of the Great Deep and Noah’s Flood”¹⁵
“Navajo Sandstone in Zion National Park and the Formation of Moqui Balls—Failure of the Young-Earth Creationists’ Flood Geology Model”¹⁶
“Radiohalos—Solving the Mystery of the Missing Bullets—Origin of Po halos Revisited”¹⁷

Notes

Lorence G. Collins

Lorence G. Collins is a retired professor of geology from California State University Northridge with specialties in mineralogy and petrology. He resides in Thousand Oaks, California, and attends the United Methodist Church. He has a website with forty-one articles that give arguments against the young-Earth creationists’ models (see http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/creation.html).