Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

Years ago, people began to study the rocks. They noticed something they did not expect. They found fossils in the rocks that were the remains of plants and animals that were quite different from the life that we know today. The lower the rock layer, the more unusual the fossils became. People began to identify different layers that they had observed in the ground. Each layer had distinct characteristics and distinct fossils.

They discovered that, when the layers overlapped, they consistently appeared in the same order wherever they looked. It occurred to them that these layers might represent distinct time periods, with each being the result of the accumulation of sediments in a particular timeframe. The layers that are always lower must surely be the oldest, and the layers that are always higher must be younger. These explorers identified the different layers and put together what is known as the geologic column.

When I was an ardent defender of young-earth creationism, the geologic column began to trouble me. Why do we find nothing close to a modern mammal in layers older than the Quaternary and Tertiary periods (last 65 million years)? Why are no trilobites ever found after the Permian period (248 million years ago)? Why does every dinosaur fossil date at least 60 million years older than every human fossil? How can a creationist explain it?

Discovery of the Geologic Column

The geologic column was not invented to prove evolution. Creationists discovered it before Darwin. They simply put together what they could see in the rocks. These explorers were not evolutionists. Adam Sedgwick, for example, discovered the Cambrian and Devonian periods, and believed that God had created life. When Darwin later came along and presented his theory, Sedgwick disagreed. But he did not dispute the geologic column. He could see that life was quite different in the past.

These men had developed a viewpoint known as Catastrophism. They believed that God had created a strange world system with strange life a long time ago. They called it the Cambrian period. It seemed to them that God must have wiped out the Cambrian life in a catastrophe, for the Cambrian life was no longer found in the layers above it. So perhaps Cambrian life had been catastrophically wiped out, and God had re-created the world with different species. This they called the Ordovician period.

But as one went up from the Ordovician layer, he would again find another distinct layer. Well then, these men concluded, another catastrophe must have ended the Ordovician period, and the Creator had produced yet another world, the Silurian.

Each of the periods, in turn, was wiped out only to be replaced by something new. Finally, the current time period–the Quaternary–was reached. After each catastrophe life was created that was somewhat different from the life in the previous world.

Adam Sedgwick A creationist who helped develop the geologic column before Darwin. How Good Are Those Young-Earth Arguments? By Dave E. Matson. More on the history of the discovery of the geologic column. Geological Time Machine Learn more about the geologic column

Geologic Column links

Catastrophism

How could they fit this idea with the Bible? Well, folks “found” a convenient gap in Genesis 1. In Gen.1:1 we are told that God created the heavens and the earth. And people decided there was a large gap between verse 1 and verse 2. In this gap, the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, and all of the other ancient periods, took place.

Finally, the last catastrophe occurred, wiping out the Neogene Period. As a result of this last catastrophe the earth was without form and void once again until God would re-create the earth one last time. These men wrote that Genesis 1:2 picks up the story after the last period had been wiped out, making the earth void–“And the earth was without form and void”–and a new creation was ready to begin. The story of this last creation is supposedly told in the remainder of Genesis 1. So, all of these periods and catastrophes were supposedly hidden between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Thus, people were able to fit these geological observations with the Bible.

I think that, perhaps, their creative insertion of a gap into Genesis 1 did not do justice to the text, but we digress.

Science has advanced since the early 1800’s when this view was prevalent. Yes, science still believes there were catastrophes in the past, but these catastrophes did not actually wipe out all of life. We always find life forms that survived through the transition to the next period. We cannot explain the whole fossil record by resorting to catastrophes and new creations.

The Progression of Life

The discovery of radiometric dating has greatly increased our understanding of the geologic column. We are now able to determine the dates of rock layers that fossils are buried in and are able to track when different life forms came into existence and when they died off. We discover that new creatures were not introduced all at once at the beginning of each period. Rather, new species have been continually introduced into the environment throughout time.

This last point is troubling for creationists. For how did each of these new species emerge? How, for instance, did the Mesohippus–an early species of horse– come into existence? Imagine that you are walking through a meadow when suddenly–BOOM–an adult Mesohippus pair materializes out of nowhere right in front of your eyes. Are we to believe that this is the way God created? And did God continually create millions of species throughout the ages, always resorting to this spectacular out-of-nothing creation? BOOM! There is a new species of horse. BOOM! A new monkey. BOOM! God just decided to create a new kind of rat. Look! Right at your feet. BOOM! A lion. BOOM! Watermelon. BOOM! T Rex. BOOM! Is this even plausible?

Such creation events violate the laws of nature including the laws of conservation of mass, thermodynamics, and biogenesis. Did God suspend these laws many millions of times in order to complete these many acts of creation?

The facts are beginning to get difficult for Creationists. Now, when earth history was thought to consist of a series of creations and catastrophes, one might be able to suggest that these were magical intervals where God stepped in and re-created the world. But are we to believe that God repeated these little acts of special creation many, many millions of times?

Not only do we find that new species have repeatedly been introduced into the world, but we find an interesting thing when we arrange the fossils in the order that they first appear. We find an uncanny consistency with evolution theory. At the bottom we find simple life forms. As we move up, the fossil record begins to diversify, and includes fish, then reptiles, then mammals, and finally, humans.

My Epiphany

Years ago, I was fighting the good fight of creation on the Internet. I argued that evolution was impossible, for it required that the genetic code had to be changed to make new kinds of animals. It did not seem feasible to me that evolution could do this. I argued in the CompuServe debate forum, basing my arguments on Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crises.

My favorite illustration was the difference between mammals and reptiles. The differences between living mammals and reptiles are substantial. Mammals all have hair, mammary glands, a four-chambered heart, and the distinct mammalian ear, with three little bones inside. These features are found in no living reptiles. I argued that this is because there is no viable intermediate between the two, that an animal could have either the reptile genetic code or the mammal code but could not be in the middle.

An evolutionist disagreed with me. He told me that in the past there had been many intermediates. He said that there were animals that, for instance, had jaw and ear bones that were intermediate between reptiles and mammals. How did he know this? He gave a reference to an essay in Stephen Gould’s Ten Little Piggies. I wrote back that since the local library had a large collection of children’s books, I should be able to find that book. (I thought that was quite a zinger.)

I borrowed the book and found an interesting account of how bones in the reptile jaw evolved and changed through millions of years to become the mammals’ ear. That sounded like such a clever tale. How could Gould believe it? Perhaps he made it up. But there was one little footnote, a footnote that would change my life. It said simply, “Allin, E. F. 1975. Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear. Journal of Morphology 147:403-38.” That’s it. That’s all it said. But it was about to make a huge impact on me.

You see, I had developed this habit of looking things up, and had been making regular trips to a university library. I was getting involved in some serious discussions on the Internet and was finding the scientific journals to be a reliable source of information. Well, I couldn’t believe that a real scientific journal would take such a tale seriously. But wait. Before I would declare victory, I needed to check it out.

On my next trip to the library, I found my way to the biomedical journal archive. I retrieved the specified journal and started to read. I could not believe my eyes. There were detailed descriptions of many intermediate fossils. The article described in detail how the bones evolved from reptiles to mammals through a long series of mammal-like reptiles.

I paged through the volume in my hand. There were hundreds of pages, all loaded with information. I looked at other journals. I found page after page describing transitional fossils. More significantly, there were all of those troublesome dates. If one arranged the fossils according to date, one could see how the bones changed with time. Each fossil species was dated at a specific time range. It all fit together.

I didn’t know what to think. Could all of these fossil drawings be fakes? Could all of these dates be pulled out of a hat? Did these articles consist of thousands of lies? All seemed to indicate that life evolved over many millions of years. Were all of these thousands of “facts” actually guesses?

I looked around me. The room was filled with many bookshelves; each was filled with hundreds of bound journals. Were all of these journals drenched with lies?

Several medical students were doing research there. Perhaps some day they would need to operate on my heart or fight some disease. Was I to believe that these medical students were in this room filled with misinformation, and that they were diligently sorting out the evolutionist lies while learning medical knowledge? How could so much error have entered this room? It made no sense.

The Evolution of the Mammalian Middle Ear by Edgar F. Allin. The paper that initiated my journey. Taxonomy, Transitional Forms, and the Fossil Record By Keith B. Miller. A good overview with illustrations. Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ By Kathleen Hunt. Lists many transitionals (this link is to the mammal-like reptile section of that file) Jaws to Ears in the Ancestors of Mammals at UC Museum of Paleontology Understanding Evolution website.

Transitional Fossil Links

How can you explain those mysterious mammal-like reptiles? Reptiles and mammals today are quite distinct from each other. Mammalian features include differentiated teeth (incisors, canines, premolars, molars), double rooted teeth, a distinct jaw joint, three bones in the ear (stapes, incus, malleus), the diaphragm, limbs under the body, a different arrangement of toe bones, and a braincase that is firmly attached to the skull. No reptile has these features. But when we look at ancient fossils, we find a strange series of animals with features in the middle.

They begin 300 Ma (million years ago) in the Pennsylvanian. It was a different world. There were no mammals, flowering plants, or even dinosaurs. According to the fossil record, these would all come later. The world belonged to amphibians and reptiles. Early Synapsids such as Haptodus appeared. Their dentary jaw bones rose in the place where later animals would have a new jaw joint–the mammalian joint.

Then advanced pelycosaurs (270 Ma) like the Dimetrodon had signs of a bony prong for the eardrum. Later, cynodonts like the Procynosuchus (236 Ma) had jawbones more similar to mammals, but they still had the reptile’s jaw hinge.

The Probainognathus (238 Ma) and the Thrinaxodons (227 Ma) have signs of two distinct jaw joints, the reptilian and the mammalian. This allowed some of the bones that had been part of the reptile’s jaw to transmit vibrations to the ear. This was the beginning of the special mammalian ear bones.

By the time the Sinoconodon appears (208 Ma) the mammalian jaw joint predominates, and the reptilian jaw joint is small.

The Morganucodon (205 Ma) has teeth like a mammal, a distinct mammalian jaw joint, and only a tiny remnant of the reptile’s jaw. It’s malleus and incus ear bones remain attached to the jaw.

By the late Cretaceous period (80 Ma) early placental mammals like the Asioryctes had jaws and ears that were transformed to the mammalian type. Two of the reptile’s jaw bones, the quadrate and the articular were no longer part of the jaw. Instead, they had become parts of the middle ear, the malleus and incus.

This is only a brief overview of these strange creatures. In fact, there are thousands of species that span many millions of years, with many intermediate stages of many different features.

Now what on earth was God doing? Why was he slowly introducing mammalian features into the fossil record? Why did he progressively change the design of the jaw, ear, teeth, and limbs until the animals look more and more like mammals? Should I just shrug my shoulders? “God moves in mysterious ways.” Problem resolved? No, I shall ask why.

Did God learn from experience and introduce new creatures with improvement every several thousand years or so? Creationists would cringe at that suggestion. Then why do we find this progression? It is difficult to escape the all-too-obvious conclusion: God must have allowed the first mammal to evolve from reptiles through a process involving many millions of years.

As a Creationist, I finally came to the point where I considered that possibility. It instantly become apparent that this would be a huge change in worldview. For if the first mammal evolved from reptiles, then where did the second mammal come from? If God used thousands of transitions to evolve the first mammal, did he then just copy that design to create the second and third mammals? That makes no sense. These mammals must have evolved also.

In fact, we would need to conclude that all mammals have evolved from these mammal-like reptiles. Think for a minute of all the varieties of mammals that you know–elephants, tigers, mice, dogs, and whales, to name a few. Did all of these descend from a sequence of mammal-like reptiles? Is there any other way to explain all these intermediates?

The impact of that day in the library was truly stunning. I didn’t know what to say. I could not argue against the overwhelming evidence for mammal evolution. That was hopeless. But neither could I imagine believing it. Something had happened to me. My mind had begun to think. It was becoming free. And it was not about to be stopped. Oh no. There is no stopping the mind set free.

I went to the library and borrowed a few books on evolution and creation–diligently studying both sides of the argument. I started to read the evolutionist books with amazement. I had thought that evolutionists taught that floating cows had somehow turned into whales; that hopeful monsters had suddenly evolved without transitions; that one must have blind faith since transitional fossils did not exist; that one must simply guess at the dates for the fossils; and that one must ignore all of the evidence for young-earth creation. I was surprised to learn what these scientists actually knew about the Creationist teachings of flood geology, of the proposed young-earth proofs, and of the reported problems of evolution.

And I was surprised at the convincing answers that they had for these Creationist arguments. I was surprised to see all the arguments they had for evolution. I read with enthusiasm. I learned about isochrons, intermediate fossils, the geologic column, and much, much more.

I would never see the world in the same light. Several weeks later I found myself staring at the fossil of a large dinosaur in a museum. I stared with amazement. I looked at the details of every bone in the back. I wondered if a design so marvelous could really have evolved. But I knew that someone could show me other animals that had lived earlier that had transitional features to this dinosaur. And I knew that one could trace bones back through the fossil record to illustrate the broad path through which this creature had evolved. I stared and I pondered. And then I pondered some more.

Within days, I had lost interest in fighting evolution. I began to read more and write less. When I did debate, I confined my arguments to the issue of the origin of life. But I could no longer ignore what I had learned. Several months later I first sent out an email with probing questions to a creationist who had arrived on the scene. He never responded. I have not stopped questioning.

Horse sense

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the debate forum. I was asked to sit on the wrong side. By this time, I was no longer identifying myself as a creation apologist, but as an explorer, a questioner, a fence sitter. That’s when I met Jim. Jim arrived on the debate scene filled with his message, that of Intelligent Design (ID). The ID viewpoint concedes that the earth might be billions of years old, but stresses that life forms required specific design. I liked the concept–it was my only option beside evolution.

I explained that I was sitting on the fence and could not make up my mind. Jim informed me that evolution was believed only by people that had been biased by methodological naturalism (the scientific method of looking for natural causes for everything). Me? Biased by naturalism? I, who was grasping desperately for any option but evolution? I, who had invested so much of my time fighting evolution? I, who had given thousands of dollars to creationist organizations? Me? How could it be that I was biased for naturalism?

No, I explained, it was not my bias that brought me where I was, it was the evidence that was bothering me.

“What evidence?” Jim asked.

I wrote back, explaining the strength of the evolutionary viewpoint. First there were all of those intermediate fossils. Then there was the evidence of embryology, comparative anatomy, and the geographic distribution of animals. The more I wrote, the more it all seemed to fit together. Jim disagreed.

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution by Douglas Theobald, PhD. Horse Evolution by Kathleen Hunt Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences This book helped me find my way out of Creationism.

Evolution Links

The discussion quickly centered on the well-known horse series. According to evolutionary understanding, the modern horse, donkey, and zebra evolved from something like the fox-sized creature known as hyracotherium. There are hundreds of intermediate horse fossils of dozens of species that have been found between these two extremes. Jim conceded that all of those intermediates might have indeed existed at the times claimed but insisted that the horses did not evolve from one type to another. Instead, he claimed that each new kind of horse was created unique. Apparently, God kept rolling out a new horse model every million years or so.

How did these new horses come into existence? Did a pair of adult horses suddenly materialize out of nowhere? Was God still creating horses this way today? Could I be walking through a meadow some day and suddenly have a new kind of adult horse materialize before my eyes? As a young-earth creationist, I would have envisioned creation something like that. But I would have seen it as a one-time miracle in which everything was created in one week. I could always argue that creation week was a magical week, and that things were very different then. But now I was being asked to see this as an ongoing process for millions of years. It seemed so implausible. Was Jim insisting that this is the way it happened? No, Jim had no comment on how new species came into existence. He just knew it wasn’t by evolution.

But why couldn’t it be by evolution? God could certainly do it that way, couldn’t he? After all, don’t you believe that he creates humans by allowing them to grow from a fertilized egg to a fetus to a baby to an adult? If he allows us to “evolve” from a fetus to an adult, perhaps that is the way he created animals in the first place.

I could not conceive of another way of creating new creatures that was consistent with the fossil record and made sense. Did God create an endless series of animals that popped up out of nowhere? It’s not very likely. Could he have used organic material that was in the ground from previous life forms? After all, Genesis says that he used the dust of the ground to make man. Is it evil to suggest that God could have used organic material in the ground to form the next horse in the series? I didn’t think so. But if we concede this as a possibility, can we allow that God could have used the raw material of an existing horse embryo and modified it to make the next kind of horse inside a mare’s womb? Could God have used a Mesohippus embryo to form the first Miohippus inside a Mesohippus? Would it be evil to suggest that? I didn’t think so. It does make more sense than zapping it into existence out of nowhere. Right? Could God have allowed the genetic material of one species of horse to become modified so that it became the next kind? Could he have made many small changes through many generations until the next species appeared?

As I continued to press Jim for an answer, I observed that I was now arguing for evolution– theistic evolution, yes, but definitely for evolution.

Jim was somewhat with me to the last step, but he could not make that leap to evolution. But to me, it did not seem evil to take that step. The best explanation for the horse series was that the modern horse evolved from something like the Hyracotherium. And the Hyracotherium evolved from the first mammals, which evolved from the mammal-like reptiles. And these must surely have evolved from animals similar to reptiles, which evolved from primitive animals, which evolved from one-celled creatures. The first horse evolved from a microbe. I now believed in evolution.

Human Evolution

Then there was that final hurdle, the hardest one. If God allowed a speck of life to evolve into a reptile, which evolved into mammals, which then evolved into apes, did he stop there? Where did humans come from? Is it possible that God evolved everything up to ape, and then instantly created man with the same organs that had evolved for years? Did he develop the mammal’s ear over time, and then suddenly create a human from scratch with the same ear design that had taken millions of years to evolve? Somehow that didn’t seem consistent. It sure was hard to admit that. But the facts were clear. The ear design that had surely evolved was also in me.

Martin Lubenow had written a book called Bones of Contention. It was my last hope. It argued that there was no evidence for the evolution of humans. His strongest argument, to my mind, was that fully human bones had been found which were more than 1.5 million years old, older than many of the reported transitional fossils between ape and man. This would have ruled out those creatures as direct ancestors of humans, for humans existed before them. I knew I had better not parrot what I had heard until I looked at the other side. I had seen postings on the web from a Harvard anthropology professor, Greg Laden. So, I asked him what he thought about these ancient human fossils.

“What fossils?” he wanted to know.

I told him that Lubenow had listed fossil KNM-ER 1470 in his book as a very old human fossil. I didn’t know what those numbers meant, but Greg knew.

He told me that he had used a cast of that very fossil skull in his classroom and explained in detail how the features were intermediate between humans and apes.

The creationist argument evaporated. This supposed human fossil wasn’t even human. It had many ape-like features. What was this strange creature, with characteristics of both man and ape? Many similar creatures have been found. Did God create a series of intermediate creatures between ape and man before he finally got it right? Or did he allow man to evolve? I could see only one option– evolution.

​ Fossil Hominids: The evidence for human evolution. By Jim Foley KNM-ER 1470 Creationists can’t decide if this homo habilis is a man or an ape.

Hominid Fossil Links

What about God?

We have come a long way. Did we eliminate God? Many people think not. They have found that they can believe in both evolution and God. Could not God have used evolution as his tool? If you believe that God allowed you to grow from a single fertilized egg to a fetus to an adult, why could he not have allowed the whole human race to evolve from a single cell? Some say that God did exactly this, that he started the process of evolution and let it proceed. Others say he nudged it along as it progressed. There is nothing within the concept of evolution that eliminates God.

I will hold off discussing the existence of God until later. First, we have a more pressing concern. Perhaps you understand the evidence for evolution, but your knowledge of the Bible makes it difficult for you to accept it. So, we need to next take a close look at the Bible.

Yes, lets look at the Bible,

---

Addendum: Q&A

WASN’T DARWIN JUST TRYING TO GET AWAY WITH SIN?

A reader, JB, wrote that, perhaps, Darwin’s sin “was the reason for his search to find a supposed reasonable alternative”.

I recommend that JB read Darwin’s book, The Origin of the Species. This book presents the reasons for Darwin’s conclusion. The book has nothing to do with wanting to find a way to get away with sin. It involves solid reasoning. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself.

I think JB would search long and hard to find a better explanation for the available data then the Theory of Evolution.

WHAT MAKES THINGS EVOLVE?

This question, and the ones that follow, were asked by another reader.

Animals and plants evolve because their bodies are controlled by genes which occasionally experience random changes known as mutations. Some of these changes are good for survival, some are not. The creatures that have the most favorable genes are more likely to survive and pass their genes to the next generation. This causes creatures to gradually change into a form that best allows them to survive in their environment.

WHY DID MAN DEVELOP, AND YET MONKEYS STILL EXIST?

Actually, we really didn’t come from monkeys. Rather, monkeys, apes, and humans all descended from a common ancestor (which, incidentally, was probably close to modern monkeys). The various offspring of this ancestor ended up exploiting various niches of nature to earn their survival. And so, they diversified into many species, each with its own niche. Monkeys continue to survive in the tops of the jungles, finding plenty of food up there and quickly scrambling from tree to tree to escape predators. Humans would not do good in that environment. So, we have both humans and monkeys, each surviving in a different way in a different environment. See a discussion of this at this thread.  I also discuss this in more detail later in this series.

ARE WE TRULY JUST AN ACCIDENTAL MUTATION, OR DO OTHER FORCES CAUSE SUCH CHANGES?

The mutations are random. However, the forces of selection for survival drive the creatures to survive in their niche.

WHY DO SOME ANIMALS LIKE CROCODILES STAY THE SAME FOR HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS?

Once an animal has become well established in a large niche, if that environment remains stable, the physical changes to that creature often become small. Thus, since sharks and crocodiles have evolved to be well adapted to certain stable roles in the environment, they have little need of further change. Their genes continue to mutate, but the forces of natural selection hold the physical forms of the creatures stable with time.

SCIENTISTS DO ADMIT THAT IT SEEMS THERE WERE EVOLUTIONARY JUMPS FROM ONE SPECIES TO ANOTHER, SO WHAT MAKES THIS HAPPEN?

Jumps occur when isolated populations find themselves in a different environment. Creatures sometimes change “rapidly” to meet the new requirements. These changes take thousands of years, but compared to the age of the earth, the change is relatively rapid. A good picture of how this happens can be seen in the various dog breeds. Most of these breeds developed in the last several thousand years as humans guided their environment and selected those that they wanted to breed. Thus in a few thousand years, we see great differences in the dogs. Should this breeding continue, we will one day have many different species of dogs with different characteristics.

WILL WE HUMANS EVOLVE INTO SOMETHING ELSE IN A MILLION YEARS, AND IF SO WHAT DRIVES IT?

Certainly human genes will be different in a million years. The extent and direction of the changes depend on the environment. Interestingly, we as humans can affect our environment, and thus can influence the future or our species.

IS THERE ONE OR TWO BOOKS THAT COULD EXPLAIN EVOLUTION FOR ME, IN SIMPLE TERMS?

I would begin at the Talk.Origins Archive. Also, many have found The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins to be good introductory books to the mechanisms of evolution.

Copyright Merle Hertzler 2002, 2005, 2022. All rights reserved.

Here’s the link to this article by Merle Hertzler.

Last night some very special packages arrived at your house. They had made a long journey. They had been traveling for millions of years, or so I have been told. Finally, they reached your house last night. I am referring, of course, to the light from the distant stars.

Some of my readers might not believe this light had been traveling that long. They have a book that they trust. They understand that book to say the universe is less than 10,000 years old. If the universe is only a few thousand years old, then no, the light was not traveling millions of years. The believer in both the Bible and science has a dilemma.

I can understand this concern. I too, was once a young earth creationist. I figured there needed to be some explanation that had the light traveling no more than 20,000 years. I now think I was wrong. There were indeed millions of years.

The calculation for the light’s travel time is quite simple. You take the total distance traveled and divide it by the speed that the light traveled. Simple math. Simple answer.

SN 1987A

Ah, but what if the stars really are not as far away as the scientists claim? How can scientists be so sure the stars are far away? Let’s look at one measurement that was made. On February 23, 1987, a supernova, which is a vast star explosion, was observed. It is known as SN 1987A. About eight months after we observed the explosion, we saw reflections from the explosion in a distant gas cloud ring that circled the supernova. The ring can be seen as an orange circle in the photo. The reason the reflected light was delayed eight months was that it took time for the light to travel from the supernova to the distant gas clouds and then to reflect from there back to earth. (See illustration below.) And so, we can conclude that it took light about eight months–or 0.66 years– to journey from the supernova to the gas ring.

Knowing the time that it took to reach the ring, and knowing the speed of light, we can calculate the distance to the ring. Knowing this distance and measuring the angle between the supernova and the reflection as seen from the earth, we can use simple trigonometry to calculate the distance of the supernova from the earth. If you forget high school trig, no problem, astronomers have calculated it for you. The supernova was far enough away that light had to travel 169,000 years to get here.

So, if you think the universe is say 6000 years old, how is it that we can see this supernova and the reflected light? If the light really came from the supernova, it had to travel 169,000 years to reach earth. It must have left the supernova long before the traditional date of Creation, 4004 BC. And so many of us conclude that the universe must be far more than 6000 years old.

“Ah,” one might say, “You are merely assuming that the light actually began its journey at that supernova. Were you there? Maybe God created a beam of light on its way to the earth at creation. The lights came on, and the beam of light in the illustration was already created complete on its path to earth. It only looks like the light came from the supernova.”

There is a big problem with this view. We are not merely seeing a simple beam of light. We see events such as this supernova explosion in the light that arrives. Did these explosions really occur? If the light was created part way between the star and the earth in such a way that it looked like an explosion, then what we have is a hoax. We have an elaborate deception designed to look like an explosion that never happened.

Further, the light from the explosion was not seen until 1987. If the universe is 6,000 years old, then the beam had to be set up far enough away that it took 6,000 years before we first saw it. And the beginning of the light beam from the ring around the supernova needed to be set back so that it took 8 additional months for the light from the ring to reach us. The hoax is becoming more complex. What could possibly be the reason for this other than to deliberately deceive us?

Space Telescope Science Institute Additional photos of SN 1987A Supernova 1987A  Refutes 6000 Year Old Universe by Geno Castagnoli Properties of the SN 1987A Circumstellar Ring by N. Panagea et. al. The original paper measuring the distance to this supernova.

SN 1987A links

If we were to assume that the Bible was God’s perfect revelation, but that the light from the stars was deceiving us, how could we trust such a God’s written revelation? For if God’s physical evidence is deceptive, could not the written evidence also be deceptive?

Suppose that God had deliberately faked the light of an explosion that had never happened. If he did this, how would we know anything about the universe? Once we postulate that an all-powerful, deceptive God is manipulating the data, we could know nothing. Such a God could be fooling us in everything we observe. We may think a lightning strike is electrical, but if a deceitful God is in charge, maybe he is only fooling us. We may think the laws of physics apply, but a deceitful God could be manipulating the data. So, if God is all-powerful, and is deceitfully manipulating the universe, we would know nothing.

Let’s rule out a deceitful God. Then I can reach no other conclusion but that the distant star light has been traveling for millions of years.

Some readers may have thought of another way out of this dilemma. “Yes,” they would say, “the light traveled that far, but it went really, really fast. Perhaps the speed of light was different back then.”

This is an old Creationist claim, which has been thoroughly refuted [1]. The speed of light is constant.

Besides, in the case of this supernova, a faster speed of light would not help. Light from the supernova took 8 months to reach the outer ring. Suppose light was traveling ten times as fast when it started its journey. Then the light would have gone ten times further during those 8 months it took to reach the cloud ring. The ring would be ten times bigger than we have calculated. This would mean that the triangle in the illustration above is ten times as big, and the distance to earth is ten times as far. This only makes the problem worse! Now the light would need to travel much further to get to earth. So even if the light had started out faster, it would not resolve the problem for those that believe the earth is 6,000 years old.

The light we see in the photo above simply could not have made it to earth if the universe is less than 169,000 years old. Something is wrong with the 6000-year time frame.

I use SN 1987A as an example because it was in a galaxy that was close enough that we could photograph it. We can see that other supernovas are occurring much further away. The light that arrives from the most distant stars would have taken billions of years to reach earth. Yet we see it. Can you reach any other conclusion but that the universe is billions of years old?

But what about the Bible?

The conclusion of an old universe will not be easy for some Christians to reach. You have a high regard for the findings of true scientific observation and reason, but you also trust the Bible. And your Bible seems to indicate that the universe is thousands of years old, not billions. So, you are faced with a conflict. One solution would be to just ignore the physical observations of the universe. Another solution would be to just ignore the Bible. Neither of those is satisfactory to you.

There are some other options. Either you could modify your observations of starlight so that it is compatible with your interpretation of the Bible, or you could modify your interpretation of the Bible so that it is compatible with the physical observations. We have tried to modify our observations of the universe to match a 6000-year-old earth and failed. So, the natural follow-up question for many Christians is, “Can the Bible be interpreted to be compatible with an old universe?”

Many Christians have found that the Bible can indeed be interpreted that way. For instance, Norman Geisler, one of the foremost Evangelical apologists, writes:

One of the biggest problems for the young earth view is in astronomy. We can see light from stars that took 15 billion years to get here. To say that God created them with the appearance of age does not satisfy the question of how their light reached us. We have watched star explosions that happened billions of years ago, but if the universe is not billions of years old, then we are seeing light from stars that never existed because they would have died before Creation. Why would God deceive us with the evidence? The old earth view seems to fit the evidence better and causes no problem with the Bible.[2]

Notice that this quote does not come from a godless, atheist infidel. No, it comes from a leading Evangelical authority. He finds that an old earth causes no problem with the Bible. And many leading Evangelical scholars have been publicly open to an old-earth view, including Lee Strobel, John Ankerberg, Pat Robertson, William Lane Craig, Hugh Ross, Hank Hannegraff, and Francis Schaeffer.

Notable Christians Open to an Old Earth Interpretation, at Reasons to Believe by Hugh Ross. Affiliation of Christian Geologists Christian geologists who believe in an old earth. Old Earth Ministries by Greg Neyman. “Dedicated to sharing the Gospel, supporting Christians who believe in an old earth, and ending the false teaching of young earth creationism.” Not ‘Apparent Age’: God is not deceptive A Christian perspective making many of the same points found on this page.

Evangelical Old-Earthers

There are several ways in which the Bible can be interpreted to be compatible with an old universe. One of the most popular is to assume that each “day” in Genesis actually represents a long period of time. Other options have been proposed. If your interpretation of the Bible is making it difficult to accept the obvious conclusion from nature, you may want to look at some of the links above before you proceed.

The Fossil Record

I will move on. Not only do we find that the stars are old, but we can see that the earth is old.

All around the world we find many layers of underground fossils and sediments. Where did all of these fossils come from? Glenn Morton, a former young-earth Creationist writer, has written a description of the fossil record as it appears in North Dakota. He describes the 3-mile-thick fossil record, which includes animal fossils, burrows, shark teeth, coal, and fecal pellets (click here to see it offsite).

Where did all of these layers come from? How is it that we find animal fossils, teeth, and fecal pellets spread throughout the record? It is difficult to escape the conclusion that all of these are the remains of real animals that were buried. But if animals have been buried 3 miles deep, and other animals have been buried on top of them, and still others on top of them up through all 3 miles of sediment, one must surely conclude that it took a long time for all those layers to accumulate.

Let’s look at another example of the details found in the fossil record. Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone Park is a 2000-foot-high wall of rock that includes the petrified remains of 18 forests, each one growing on sediments that were deposited on the forest layer below it. [3]

Now think about that. A forest grew and was covered up by a catastrophic volcano and landslide. The soil weathered until it became fit for plant life to grow again. Another forest grew. Many years later it too was wiped out in another catastrophe. The process repeated until at least 18 forests grew and were wiped out. Surely it takes a long time for one forest to be covered, for the soil to weather, and for another forest to grow above it, only to be covered again. Do you not agree that the bottom of this ridge–down below those 18 fossilized forests–is very old?

How can young-earth believers explain the fossil record? Some have tried to say that God created all of these layers at the beginning of the world. But is that logical? Are we really to believe that the fossil bones of dinosaurs and buried forests were put into the rocks at the creation of the world? That would mean that those dinosaur fossils did not come from real animals. Is it possible that God just buried all of those fake fossils down there? That doesn’t seem likely. Could God be so deceptive? I think we have agreed to rule out a deceptive God.

So, we must conclude that the fossils are real, and that the rocks in which dinosaur fossils were found were formed after those dinosaurs had lived and died. Therefore, many of the rocks down there could not have been formed during a one-week creation. They had to be formed later, sometime after the dinosaurs that they cover had died.

Now the same reasoning that makes me think that the dinosaurs were real, also convinces me that the fish and trilobite fossils found far below the dinosaur fossils are also the real remains of real animals that once lived. And so, these rocks must also have been formed long after the origin of the earth. These fossils simply could not have existed in the earth from the beginning. They must have been made later, and there must have been a long period of time involved.

Flood Geology

Some young-earth creationists have tried to argue that the bulk of the fossil record was formed during Noah’s flood, a view known as flood-geology. I had read such books as a teenager and was convinced that they described the way the fossil record was formed. Years later, I would find that the problems with this view are insurmountable.

For instance, in the middle of the Grand Canyon we find a buried sand dune, which was made of wind-blown sand. Now flood geologists claim that the rock layers in the Grand Canyon were created during Noah’s flood. But if those rock layers were formed during the flood, why do we see buried sand dunes amid the deposits? Something is wrong here. Surely there were no winds blowing sand around under the flood waters. How then is this dune in the middle of the deposits? If this dune occurred before the flood, how can you explain all the fossil-bearing layers below it? And if the dune occurred after the flood, how can you explain all the layers above it? Where did they come from? So, a global flood does not explain the fossil record.

​Problems with a Global Flood . By Mark Isaak. Learn why scientists do not take flood-geology seriously. The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood by Glenn Morton. Find out what is below the surface of the earth. The Impossible Voyage of Noah’s Ark at National Center for Science Education. Noah’s Flood and Creation Science at Old Earth Ministries.

Flood links

And what about the cave systems, footprints, and animal burrows that we find throughout the fossil record? How can these things be created during a raging flood? Animals would not be walking around leaving footprints if a flood was going on above them, would they? And how can a cave possibly get formed in the middle of a flood? So, it seems to me that the flood cannot explain the fossil record. The layers of rock must have been formed over a very long period of time.

Isochrons

How old is the earth? Surprisingly, modern science has been able to answer that question to a high degree of accuracy. A technique known as radiometric dating is used to find the age of the rock layers. These dates are based on the knowledge that some elements in rocks decay to form other elements. We know how fast they decay. Thus, if we know what the original concentrations of the elements in a rock were, and know what the concentrations are today, and if we can establish that there were no outside disturbances that interfered with the process, we can calculate the age of a rock. That sounds like a lot of unknowns. Young-earth Creationists love to point them out as if scientists had never thought about them. They are wrong. Scientists have dealt with these questions and understand the process.

This gets a little technical here, but I think we should take a brief look at Rb-Sr isochrons. This was the clincher for me. I had once argued that the earth is young, but when I learned about isochrons, I soon changed my mind.

Scientists use isochrons to calculate the original composition of certain elements in a rock, and to show that contamination has not affected the result. Does that sound like magic? It isn’t. It turns out that the element rubidium-87 (Rb-87) in rock decays to form strontium-87 (Sr-87) at a known rate. The more Rb-87 in a rock, the faster Sr-87 accumulates. So, if we know the concentration of Rb-87 of any sample, we will know the rate at which the Sr-87 concentration increases with time. And knowing this rate of change, we can calculate back to any time in the past and determine what the Sr-87 concentration would have been.

Rocks also have another form of strontium, Sr-86, which stays constant with time.

Scientists measure the amount of Sr-87 in a rock by looking at the Sr-87/Sr-86 ratio. As Sr-87 accumulates, the Sr-87/ Sr-86 ratio increases. What does this tell us? One sample doesn’t tell us much. Let’s look at another sample from a different location on the same formation where there is more Rb-87. This point will experience a faster change in its Sr-87/Sr-86 ratio because there is more Rb-87 to decay. Again, we can calculate this ratio back through time. In a valid sample, we will find that, at some point in the distant past, both samples had the same Sr-87 /Sr-86 ratio. Scientists can repeat the process for a number of samples in a rock formation, and all will show that they had nearly the same Sr-87/Sr-86 ratio at that point in the past (see graph).

This is interesting. For, in rock formations that come from a single flow of lava, the strontium comes from one source, and would indeed have had the same Sr-87/Sr-86 ratio throughout when the rock layer was formed. The most obvious reason for the correlation of these ratios is that this is the point when the lava that created this formation was flowing, with strontium from one source spread throughout the lava. So, this must be the date of the lava flow. This procedure yields ages of many millions of years. [4]

What other explanation is there? Could God have scattered these elements in the rocks at different concentrations, using a different Sr-87/Sr-86 ratio at each point depending on the local Rb-87 content, so that it looks like the rocks existed through millions of years of decay? Nope. Remember, we are ruling out a deceitful God.

The Ages of Rocks

We have looked at only one method of dating rocks. There are more than 40 radiometric dating methods. Scientists usually do more than one test on a rock formation and find excellent correlation between the dates found. With so many different methods–each based on different principles–and with each arriving at the same answer, isn’t that strong evidence that the dates found are correct?

Even if you do not understand the concepts, there are thousands of scientists that do. And there is a scientific consensus that radiometric dating is valid, and that these rocks are many millions of years old.

It is important to understand that there are animal fossils under these rocks. Now you agree with me that these fossils were formed from the remains of animals, don’t you? And you surely must agree that the rocks on top of those animal fossils must have been deposited after those animals had lived. So the rocks on top of the fossils–the rocks that we evaluate with radiometric dating–could not have been formed when the earth was first formed. They must have been formed later.

If we were to suggest that God deliberately manipulated the elements to change the apparent date, it would mean that he did it when the volcano that formed those rocks erupted many years after the earth began. Did God manipulate the data many hundreds of times throughout the ages as these various rocks solidified? I cannot imagine God doing that, can you? Surely, he would not be bothered with deliberately manipulating the data every time a volcano erupts.

Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Roger Wiens at American Scientific Affiliation. Radiometric Dating and the Geological Time Scale by Andrew MacRae How Old is the Earth? by G. Brent Dalrymple

Age of the Earth links

I can only come to one of two conclusions. Either those rocks are many millions of years old, or God used extremely elaborate means to make the rocks look old. The deception would be so subtle that nobody could have possibly been fooled by it until scientists had reached the modern understanding of radioactivity. Could God have deliberately faked all of these components of all of these rocks, just so we would arrive at the wrong answer when we tried to date them years later? That doesn’t seem likely to me. If we rule out deliberate deception, I am left with believing that the rocks are old.

So, can we blame demons?

Someone once told me that these rocks are not the work of God, but of the devil. She said the devil put these rocks down there, because that was the only way he could fool smart people. That devil was clever, huh?

Okay, suppose that a volcano erupts in Hawaii. Do a host of demons swarm over the lava to manipulate the elements and make it look old? Science cannot seem to detect such demons. Besides, if demons are doing that, shouldn’t the rocks from recent volcanoes date to millions of years old? Rocks from recent volcanoes do not yield old ages when tested. Have the demons forgotten to manipulate the elements?

Sure, we could postulate that these demons worked only in the distant past. But then I need to ask why there is so much volcanic rock down there if the earth is 6000 years old. Yes, we could postulate that another swarm of underground demons was down there causing volcanoes.

Then I would ask why we find no mammals or people in the older layers. Again, we could postulate yet another host of demons, who chased all of the mammals away from the early volcanoes.

We could continue to postulate yet another demon for every problem with this hypothesis. Do you see how throwing all of these demonic entities into the solution makes it all implausible? Every time we add yet another demon to fix a flaw in the hypothesis, the whole idea becomes less likely.

William of Occam discovered long ago that simple explanations are usually more likely to be true than explanations that require multiple ad hoc explanations. Once we start multiplying entities–once we add one demon after another to explain each detail–we could prove anything. We could state, for instance, that the earth was flat, and could propose a different demon for every evidence to the contrary. If that is acceptable, no idea could then be proven false. If everything can be proven, in actuality we would know nothing. So, scientists look for the simplest explanations, the ones that do not need multiple ad hoc assumptions.

The simplest explanation is that the rocks look old because they are old.

Other Evidence

How old is the earth? Rocks on the earth have been dated at 4 billion years old. Many meteorites have been dated, and we consistently find an age of about 4.5 billion years. Evidence indicates that the meteorites and the earth were formed at about the same time, about 4.5 billion years ago.

Perhaps you are not into the study of radioactive elements and exponential decay. How about counting? You can certainly do that. If you were to cut down a tree and count 100 rings, you would know that this tree was 100 years old. We can do a very similar thing with the polar ice caps. The ice builds up another thin layer every year. People have drilled down through the ice and counted the layers. They find more than 50,000 distinct layers before they begin to fade together. Doesn’t that prove that the earth is more than 6000 years old?

Young Earth Creationism

Years ago, organizations like the ICR had convinced me that the earth was young. They used arguments that sounded good when I heard only one side. They told me, for instance, that the earth’s magnetic field was decreasing. They said that the magnetic field must have started out strong several thousand years ago and decreased since then. That sounded convincing to me. Since I, who knew little about the earth’s magnetic field, was convinced by their argument, did that prove that the argument was correct? Of course not.

The real test of a scientific proposal is not the ability to convince the public, but the ability to convince those that understand the relevant facts. Those that understood recognized that the claim for a constantly decreasing magnetic field was false, for it did not account for all of the components of the earth’s magnetic field and did not recognize the evidence that the magnetic field has been fluctuating throughout earth history. Those who understood the earth’s magnetic field were not convinced with this young-earth argument.

You may hear arguments from the young-earth crowd that sound impressive. Please understand that scientific-sounding arguments that convince the public do not prove a concept is true. An idea should be considered scientific only if it stands up when those who understand the science involved analyze it and accept it. That is the real test.

Institute for Creation Research (ICR) is the granddaddy of the young-earth creation movement. The Age of the Earth by Chris Stassen at Talk.Origins

Young Earth Claims

I conclude that the earth is very old. We can see distant starlight. We can dig up old fossils and date rocks to billions of years. And a lot can happen in a billion years.