In the Beginning

When Was That?

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Stan Hudson

Series Code: ITB

Program Code: ITB000005

00:15 Hello I'm Stan Hudson speaker for In the Beginning.
00:18 Today were going to be looking at what I consider
00:20 to be some of the very best scientific questions
00:22 about creationism.
00:24 In the beginning, when was that?
00:27 The issues of how old things are.
00:29 I hope you will enjoy.
00:33 Good evening, I hope you had a good day.
00:35 We are here to continue our lecture series on
00:38 In the Beginning.
00:39 Tonight we are going to talk about what I consider to be
00:42 the weaknesses of creation theory and we will talk about
00:46 that just as honest as we can.
00:47 Because some of the biggest issues, the biggest challenges
00:50 for those who have a tendency to lean toward a biblical
00:53 account, toward belief in God and God's involvement
00:55 in this world.
00:57 We have a challenge with dating methods and so we will
01:00 talk about those challenges this evening along with other
01:02 things that deal with how old things are.
01:06 So tonight, again, is In the Beginning.
01:10 When Was That?
01:14 It's a Big Question.
01:16 We are going to get a little technical couple times this
01:19 evening and I hope that you will hang in there for opening
01:21 statement, it is a long one that sets the stage for us.
02:22 Or do they?
02:26 What kind of glasses do we look through to
02:29 look at the data?
02:30 What kind of assumptions in our world view are we bringing
02:33 to interpret things, and that is very, very key.
02:37 That is key for both sides of the aisle on this question.
02:41 It is very. very significant.
02:42 So let's take a look at age issues tonight as we look at
02:45 when the beginning was.
02:47 Now as I mentioned before, I want to be very frank with
02:50 what the difficulties are for the creationist position.
02:54 The two biggest issues, as I see it, our Radiometric
02:57 Dating and Fossil Order.
03:00 Now we will talk about fossil order when we talk about the
03:03 flood, so let's hang onto that question.
03:06 Tonight we are going to try to tackle probably the more
03:09 difficult of the two and that is radiometric dating.
03:12 How to date rocks and so on.
03:14 When we talk about chronology at how old the earth is
03:18 probably the first date that ever was seriously assigned
03:22 to how old things were was by Bishop James Usher.
03:25 He was a bishop in church in Ireland.
03:36 Now today we think of that is kind of funny to have that
03:39 kind of precision, but frankly he did some good scholarly
03:42 work and of course based it on the biblical record.
03:45 How did he come up with such a date, it is because the Bible
03:50 is concerned about chronology but remember this is
03:53 what changed things.
04:15 In other words remember that we live now in a world that
04:18 rejects the sources of information that Bishop Usher
04:21 used to determine the ages.
04:23 Now we have to shift and look at other things to try and
04:26 determine the age of the earth, and the age about
04:28 a lot of things.
04:30 Now in the discussion comes James Hutton.
04:33 James Hutton is the Father of Modern Geology.
04:51 Uniformly, gradualism is a roughly synonymous term.
04:56 Of course, in the era in which he proposes he was
05:01 specifically saying, I don't believe in the flood,
05:04 Noah's flood, as accounting for the things we see.
05:15 And that is a little bit of a challenge to what was
05:17 currently held in biblical believing parts of the world.
05:32 The processes you see going on today is the way to date
05:34 how long they have been going on.
05:35 If you have a cubic yard of material coming out of the
05:41 creek area per year then just wind the clock back and you
05:46 will be able to tell how long that creek has been
05:48 carving that channel.
05:50 That is the kind of thinking that they had.
05:53 Now what he based it on a particular in Britain was some
05:56 observations he made of erosion.
05:58 He looked at Hadrian's Wall, at Hadrian's Wall in his day
06:01 went back almost 2000 years.
06:04 His thinking was that would be about a third of the Earth's
06:07 history if you went with the biblical account.
06:10 You look at it and was not particularly eroded that much.
06:13 Then when he look at things like the mountains around
06:16 England, some of them in particular, but they have been
06:19 so eroded so very much more.
06:21 If Hadrian's Wall has only been eroded a little bit in a
06:25 third of the era of the Earth, and these mountains have much,
06:29 much, much more erosion, it seems like they have been
06:33 around much longer than 6000 years.
06:35 This was his thinking, at least one of the supports that
06:38 he used for his position.
06:40 Then came Charles Lyle, Charles Lyle wrote Principles of
06:44 Geology, he imagined the Earth to be perhaps millions of
06:48 years old and it was his book especially inspired Charles
06:52 Darwin on the Galapagos island trip he took to consider
06:57 the age of the earth.
06:58 Now was really kind of like this.
07:00 You may think of the process of Darwin's thinking this way.
07:04 They had a model for a long age in geology, which was
07:09 Uniformitarianism, gradualism, rates continue at roughly the
07:11 same speed we see now.
07:13 But we do not have a model particularly in biology yet
07:16 that would be long age.
07:17 So Darwin was able to come up with the theory of evolution
07:22 based on the survival of the fittest, natural selection,
07:27 to be the biological component for long age.
07:30 Little bitty changes over long age and that goes with the
07:33 growing field of geology in the day
07:35 were seeing long age.
07:37 Now what is interesting is the idea of determining the age
07:43 of the world, was obviously it has gotten longer and
07:46 longer as the studies have gone on.
07:48 This is just a very interesting fellow and you need to
07:51 read the biography on William Thompson.
07:54 The guy is very, very interesting.
07:56 All the different things he was into in the 1800s.
07:58 He was an engineer and involved with the Atlantic cable
08:03 that went across and connected Europe and
08:05 the United States.
08:07 Lots of interesting things, but anyway he was an Irish man
08:13 who studied in particular heat and entropy and
08:18 things involving energy.
08:20 It was some of his own ideas that led to the second law of
08:23 thermodynamics that we talked about before, remember?
08:26 Entropy happens, do this if you remember that.
08:29 It was based on some of his studies.
08:34 He studied heat loss and particularly he estimated the
08:37 age of the earth to be between 20 and 40 million years old.
08:41 Now he was a Christian, a fairly devout Christian, and
08:44 wrestled with some of these things.
08:46 Anyway he was very interesting and very colorful fellow.
08:49 So now he has the age up to 20 to 40 million years.
08:52 He thought he would not be older than that because of
08:55 heat loss issues, he thought the planet would be
08:58 too cold if it were older.
09:00 Well then another scientist Ernest Rutherford came from New
09:05 Zealand, a very brilliant scientist.
09:09 He got the Nobel Prize in a number of things.
09:11 He was really the father of nuclear physics.
09:13 He developed experiments, he figured out things like
09:17 half-life, did some kinds of isotopes,
09:21 some kinds of elements actually break down and
09:24 it would be at a consistent rate and so forth.
09:26 He really set the stage for the way that we date rocks
09:30 today, so this man was a very brilliant scientist as well.
09:34 Ernest Rutherford.
09:36 These are steps in the era and he also said that with
09:40 radioactivity going on in the planet and some things
09:44 decaying actually extends the age of the earth because
09:47 suddenly the issue that will Lord Kelvin talked about
09:51 The world getting to cool, if it is old it is okay now
09:55 because radioactive decay provides some heat and that
10:00 would extend the dates.
10:01 So now they can go a little longer than 40 million years.
10:04 Well the currently accepted age of the earth you have to
10:07 what's the currently age? Let's see if anybody can nails it.
10:11 4.5, 4.5 you are pretty close.
10:19 According to the things that I have looked at recently that
10:21 is the currently accepted age of planet Earth.
10:24 Now when you look at the universe there is also a
10:27 currently accepted age and let's see if you've got this.
10:30 It has actually moved up a little bit, used to be
10:32 14 or 15 billion but now I'm hearing a little less,
10:39 we will talk about some of these things, especially on the
10:42 last night when I talk about In The Beginning and in the end.
10:45 We will be talking about the Big Bang theory and so forth.
10:49 But anyway 13, billion + years for the universe is the
10:53 accepted thing.
10:54 Now just for the fun of it I was going to insert in here
10:57 a Hebrew lesson, everyone here wanted to learn Hebrew when
11:01 you came so I'll give you the Hebrew word for Genesis.
11:05 It is the first word in the Bible in Hebrew.
11:07 I thought you would really want to learn it.
11:09 So here we are and we are going to learn this.
11:11 It reads from right to left as you saw it
11:13 move across there.
11:14 Incidentally, if you can see that little spot at the top
11:17 of that shin there, that is a little dot, that is a tittle.
11:21 You've heard the Bible talk about a tittle?
11:23 There is a yowed which is a jot, you've heard nothing will
11:28 change a jot or a tittle?
11:30 There they are in the Hebrew with the smallest letters
11:33 basically it's what Jesus was saying that nothing would
11:37 ever change of God's word.
11:39 So reading from right to left that says B r sh ith.
11:44 Now that is B R SH and actually the third in a letter has no
11:48 sound, B R SH I TH and it is pronounced Bereshith.
11:52 Now let's hear you say it, Bereshith, Bereshith.
11:57 You just said in Hebrew the first word in the Bible and
12:01 that is literally in the beginning.
12:04 The B start the in.
12:06 Bereshith in the beginning God created the heavens
12:10 and the earth.
12:11 Alright now that is according to the scripture,
12:14 but what is the Bible for evolutionists?
12:16 The evolutionist also have a Bible and what is that?
12:19 It is not the origin of species.
12:21 It is the geologic record.
12:24 It is the order of the things we see in the planet.
12:27 It is, shall we say, the inerrant record of what is taken
12:30 place in history and we just need to interpret it
12:32 correctly to know.
12:34 Sometimes interpretation varies but there is the record
12:37 and it should be reasonably inerrant.
12:40 Now we will talk about that and look here is the standard
12:44 geologic column and we see it going from pre-Cambrian,
12:48 down at the bottom at about 4.5 billion years all the way
12:51 up to our period of time, Holocene, Quaternary and so on.
12:56 Paleozoic means early life, Mesozoic means middle life,
13:01 and Cenozoic means recent life and there are the 3 areas.
13:06 You remember some of the key developments we are going to
13:09 talk a little more about this when we get into the flood,
13:12 but 32/35 phyla of life appears at the
13:16 Precambrian Junction.
13:17 That is called the Cambrian explosion.
13:20 Here are some of the other great places where we've noticed
13:23 things happening and changing in the fossil record with
13:26 plants and animals.
13:28 Dinosaurs and mammals appear, I'm giving you a standard
13:32 interpretation on the right.
13:35 Dinosaurs and Mammals appear roughly from the
13:38 Triassic period.
13:39 The first flowers and then up here of course people appear
13:43 on the very top layers of this.
13:45 So we will talk a little more about this and of course
13:47 there are extinctions along the way.
13:49 A major marine extinction, something happened there that
13:51 took out a number of species of marine animals.
13:56 Here's the biggest extinction in terms of total number of
14:00 species that do not occur anymore after that line was
14:04 between the Permian and the Triassic and the KT boundary
14:07 between Cretaceous and Tertiary where the dinosaurs
14:10 are last recorded.
14:12 So remember those things and we will quiz you afterwards.
14:24 Remember I reference this quote as one time being on the
14:27 Tyrrell Museum as you entered in.
14:29 Well speak to the earth and it will teach you,
14:32 we are going to speak to the earth and let's see what
14:34 it teaches us tonight.
14:35 Now again James Usher came up with those dates at 4004 BC,
14:41 how did he do that?
14:42 He did that because the book of Genesis is remarkably
14:45 concerned about chronology, I will go so far as to say
14:49 there is very few books of the Bible more interested in
14:52 recording things according to dates.
14:54 They are so specific and so interested in recording
14:57 dates that even the date of the flood is dated
14:59 to Noah's own age.
15:01 His birthday is recorded in there and so on.
15:03 A lot of very interesting things, the way the children are
15:06 begat in the record of Genesis.
15:08 Not only the year in which the children are born but
15:11 how much longer the person lived afterwards and
15:13 the total life span.
15:14 This is unusual amount of information for the generations
15:17 recorded, it is though the writer, whoever that is,
15:20 maybe Moses, seem to be very interested in recording things
15:23 according to when they happened.
15:25 So the book of beginnings is unusually interested in
15:27 chronology and that is how Bishop Usher was able to come
15:30 up with that date.
15:31 Now people ask me this question.
15:35 Stan, I know that we are talking about billions of years
15:39 and the Bible records seems to be less, but isn't there a
15:43 reference that the earth was void and without form.
15:46 Maybe the earth therefore was 4.5 billion years ago created
15:52 and maybe there was time after, that kind of question.
15:55 Let's take a look at that kind of thinking.
15:57 The Earth was without form and void.
16:00 Let's take a look again at some Hebrew, you are going to
16:03 learn some Hebrew again.
16:04 Here is the problem for that thinking.
16:07 Does that solve the age of the earth issue pastor Stan if
16:12 it is 4.5 billion years, does that help us with dating the
16:17 rocks and the answer is very simply, NO!
16:21 It does not help one iota.
16:23 Why? Because the issues involving the dating of rocks is
16:28 this: in these layers between the fossils as we find them,
16:33 we find layers that have lava in them.
16:36 The lava flows are what dates to millions of years.
16:40 So those are intertwined in the fossil record.
16:44 We are not talking about the very bottom of the rocks
16:46 where 4.5 billion years might work.
16:48 Were the earth was void and without form, maybe there was
16:51 something that old if you want to look at it that way.
16:54 But it doesn't help us with the basic issue of dating how
16:57 old life is on earth.
17:00 Because the lava record is between the fossils and so what
17:04 they do is date these layers and come up with millions of
17:08 years in between and almost always newer as you go up.
17:11 So that is a challenge and we are going to talk about that
17:15 challenge this evening, I'll give it my best shot.
17:18 So again the earth was without form and void.
17:20 Well let's take a look at that story a little bit in
17:24 scripture the two words are Tohu and Bohu in Hebrew,
17:28 don't you like those?
17:29 Tohu and Bohu, kind of like willy-nilly.
17:32 Toho and Bohu, the earth was Toho and Bohu.
17:35 Now the "hu" on the end means no, so it literally is saying
17:39 no "to" no "bo" okay?
17:42 Well that is Hebrew for uninformed or unfilled,
17:47 literally no form no fill, there wasn't any form
17:51 and there wasn't any fill,
17:53 so it was void and without form.
17:55 Okay, now let's take a look.
17:56 It is interesting that the creation account has a little
18:00 pattern to it.
18:02 Why does God use a pattern?
18:03 Well this is interesting because day one, two,
18:06 and three are forming things, day four, five,
18:09 and six are filling things.
18:11 That is an interesting pattern so the heavens are formed
18:17 and then filled on opposite days.
18:20 Skies and sea, birds and fish, dry land, animals and man.
18:24 So there is a pattern here forming and then filling and of
18:28 course it ends with a seventh day Sabbath as a memorial,
18:32 a reminder of what had just taken place.
18:34 The celebration day to enjoy what God had created.
18:38 So we will keep on looking at this.
18:53 Now let's take a look at that because some of this is
18:56 interesting in the wording.
18:58 Literally it says evening and morning equal day one.
19:02 That is quite literally with the Hebrew says.
19:04 Evening and morning are day one.
19:06 A lot of people ask about the word yom, yom is Hebrew for
19:11 day, it is a word that is used here to describe day.
19:14 A lot of people say, doesn't the word yom, Hebrew for day,
19:21 can't that mean different things?
19:23 Can it mean a period of time?
19:25 Can it mean an era?
19:26 Can that mean, frankly but they are getting around to is,
19:29 can it mean millions of years?
19:31 Maybe there is some kind of pattern, someone seen a
19:34 pattern in the creation and maybe it is a roughly
19:37 equivalent pattern to evolution even.
19:40 Some people have tried to see that in the account.
19:43 Before I go up or down on that I really want to study what
19:46 the account specifically is saying in Hebrew and then we
19:50 will go interpretation from there.
19:52 What was the writer saying?
19:55 Yom, what can yom mean?
19:58 Yom can mean, incidentally a period of time and there are
20:00 indications, but watch the wording in Hebrew.
20:13 Always, and it is significant that the word is always,
20:15 283 times out of 283.
20:18 When there is a number added to yom it means a 24 hour period.
20:21 Okay, what about evening and morning's?
20:24 That happens 39 times out of 39.
20:33 So it seems like the writer is trying to indicate that it
20:39 is a literal time.
20:40 Now here is a professor who does not believe in a literal
20:43 creation, a professor at Oxford University.
21:02 Now this is a skeptic in terms of creation, but he knows
21:05 his Hebrew and what he is saying is the writer of this
21:09 story in Hebrew was writing it the best way he knew how to
21:13 indicate that he believed it was 24 hour days.
21:16 Now, where you go with that, of course is open for
21:20 everybody to do, but at least let us get it clear,
21:23 at least I like the idea of being clear on this,
21:26 that the writer was trying to say in every way he knew how,
21:30 short of talking literal days dummy, or something like that
21:34 in Hebrew addressing the reader.
21:36 He was saying it about as strongly as he could with the
21:39 W's of limiting terms according to the
21:44 Professor James Barr.
21:46 Here's the next issue that people generally raise on the
21:50 subject of creation account when it says God said:
22:06 now what is the question that generally comes up on this?
22:09 We are talking about day four.
22:17 Is that not a good question?
22:19 That is a good question!
22:20 So at that point people are saying come on it can't be
22:23 literally true if He has light evening and morning how
22:25 can it be without the Sun being present?
22:29 Or at least that part of the story?
22:32 Well first of all there is probably a theological reason
22:35 at least at let's start with that.
22:44 The sun is the biggest most important thing,
22:45 and if the sun is not there we wouldn't have our crops,
22:47 the Sun is everything.
22:49 They used to celebrate the birth date of the sun in
22:51 various cultures when the sun came back into the
22:54 hemisphere there were days of celebration.
22:57 In fact whenever it would pass the equinox and suddenly
23:00 the days were getting longer again,
23:01 longer than the nights.
23:03 In fact if you want to do a little interesting history
23:06 you will find out the December 25 is the birthday
23:12 of the Sun God.
23:14 The Sun God began to appear on the Roman calendar way back
23:17 when it was a day of celebration.
23:19 So the sun was being reborn, hooray the days are getting
23:22 longer again and we are moving toward spring and times
23:26 when we can plant and so forth.
23:27 The most popular object in nature has always been the Sun.
23:31 It is interesting to me that God places the Sun in a fairly
23:35 not so important role in the creation account.
23:40 If you think about it even today the protein Soup theory,
23:46 the way in which we may have evolved from a primordial soup
23:51 is generally accounted as the main force that got us here.
23:57 Even in that theory, it is the energy of the sun.
24:00 So there is even a little bit of reliance in the theory of
24:02 evolution upon the Sun getting us here.
24:05 It is interesting from the creation account that the sun
24:07 is considered unimportant to God.
24:11 In fact in the book of Revelation, in the book of
24:13 endings it says the time when the sun is not
24:15 particularly important.
24:22 So it is interesting the Sun is considered
24:26 to be a little bit less.
24:27 It is almost as God is saying will listen I don't need the
24:30 sun for light, I can do light without the sun.
24:32 I can measure time without the sun, it is almost as though
24:36 think about the era in which this was originally written,
24:40 when sun worship was really the rage in ancient religions.
24:45 It is almost like God is saying, the sun is just something
24:49 I made, it is something I'm using.
24:52 But it is nothing particularly great.
24:54 So how old was everything that first Friday?
24:58 I know this is a standard picture.
25:00 How old was everything that first Friday?
25:04 At the most maybe a day, how old did it look?
25:07 This would have driven scientist nuts.
25:11 Incidentally, I have talked with some scientists about this
25:14 very issue when I say what if God created a parent age.
25:18 I will remember one of getting almost particularly
25:21 visibly angry, because that is not fair.
25:23 That is not fair, a scientist should be able to observe
25:28 and get the correct answer by observation.
25:30 So it is interesting that God created a planet that
25:33 had a mature look.
25:34 Fruit on the trees, I don't know if there were rings on the
25:38 trees, and of course the all important question of whether
25:41 Adam and Eve had a belly button comes in here
25:43 at some point.
25:44 But anyway, ha, ha!
25:46 So whatever world it was there is no question that God
25:50 had it ready to be used and mature probably had a quick
25:53 observation to look like it was older than it really was.
25:57 I mean, what does a new world look like?
25:58 I don't know.
26:00 Question, why did it take God so long to create the Earth?
26:03 And that is a very good question,
26:05 why did it take Him so long?
26:07 Couldn't God have said okay let's there be everything?
26:09 So why not do that?
26:12 Why spread it over a period of six or seven days.
26:15 Why do that?
26:17 The question I think is answered with this, God was
26:20 obviously interested in setting up a pattern for something.
26:22 The year, obviously you know your science, the year is
26:27 based on the earth revolving around the Sun one revolution.
26:33 You know that the month, the month is about the moon
26:37 roughly circling planet Earth.
26:39 You know a day is a rotation of earth on its axis 24 hours.
26:45 Well we got those but where do we get the week from?
26:47 Where do we get the week from?
26:50 There is a lot of study and question about this and
26:52 some people will say it is a planetary week.
26:54 But really it appears that there is not a great answer
26:59 other than taking a look at this story.
27:08 He blessed and sanctified the Sabbath day, the seventh day
27:12 of the week because it was a way of measuring time.
27:16 Now again about the origin of the week itself,
27:18 sometimes people say it is based on the seven observable
27:22 planets, stars, sun, moon and the five reasonably
27:26 observable planets.
27:28 There is no question that those names have been given
27:31 to the days of the week.
27:33 It is interesting, but actually we know that the Sabbath
27:35 is Saturday because the Roman soldier wrote:
27:51 so we know for at least 2000 years, at least until the
27:54 time of the Romans, the week has gone continually without
27:58 any great losses, the world hasn't suddenly forgotten
28:02 a few days here or there.
28:04 In fact some people take the question of continuousness of
28:10 the week as a big issue, take a look at this:
28:27 So apparently the seven-day week which is found throughout
28:30 the world is pretty well based on the creation account.
28:34 Again we talk about dragons, tomorrow we'll talk about the
28:37 flood stories, again some ancient memories of events
28:40 a believer in the Bible appeared to be spread throughout
28:44 the cultures of the world, including the
28:46 seven-day creation week.
28:50 So there is little history there.
28:52 Now, let's get back to the Bible.
28:53 Evolutionist Bible the geological column,
28:56 because if we understand this correctly we should be
28:59 able to interpret everything
29:00 as being clearly what happened in the Earth past.
29:04 That is what we look at when we look at geologic column.
29:07 Incidentally if you look at the Geologic Column you would
29:10 know this is part of the Grand Canyon.
29:12 Do you see how flat these layers are?
29:15 Look at how table flat many of them are.
29:17 All represent millions of years, these are millions of
29:20 years in here according to the standard model.
29:23 Do you see an awful lot of erosion between layers?
29:26 You see erosion on the outside of these canyons here now.
29:29 This is a Canyon, so for what ever reason canyons have
29:32 only taken place last few years, at least in this region
29:35 according to the standard model.
29:37 But look at how flat that is, you don't see a lot of time,
29:41 shall we say, in between those layers.
29:43 It is just a thought.
29:47 Okay this is Geology 101, here we are.
29:49 I know that you want to know this.
29:51 Number one, sedimentary rock:
30:01 all these are sedimentary rocks.
30:03 Number two:
30:05 rocks that ignited and were on fire, molten rock, they were
30:09 liquid and then they cooled into something that is a rock.
30:15 Basalt is lava and they are the second most common type.
30:20 Number three: metamorphic rocks that have gone through pressure
30:23 and heat changes which change the configuration.
30:28 Now all these three types of rock the most common,
30:32 by a mile, is sedimentary rock, a good 75%.
30:37 I've seen estimates anywhere from 65 on up, but in almost
30:42 all cases sedimentary rock is generally cemented with
30:48 some action by water.
30:49 Water is often present to help them cement in some way.
30:53 I realize this sedimentary materials include soil and so
30:56 forth, but on the way to something harder.
30:59 So let's take a look at some of these things.
31:01 How can you tell how old the rock is?
31:04 Sometimes they come with dates.
31:10 That is where? That is Plymouth rock in Massachusetts.
31:14 Someone did actually carve that on to the rock symbolizing
31:18 when the Mayflower landed, but most rocks do not have dates
31:22 stamped on them, so how do we know how old rocks are?
31:25 We are going to talk now about radiometric dating.
31:28 I hope you hang in there with me.
31:30 We are going to exercise your brain as we talk
31:32 a little bit technically.
31:34 Assumptions, radiometric means radio waves,
31:37 radiometric a measurement of waves.
31:39 The assumption of radiometric dating are these,
31:42 there are three.
31:48 But the materials inside of rocks decay at a constant
31:52 observable rate, that is an assumption, a change.
32:00 Between the kind of things that are in the rock are known.
32:03 You understand what they are and you know what the
32:05 portions are when things start.
32:07 During the time that the rock is going through that decay,
32:13 nothing has changed the rock itself by sending something
32:19 in or taking something out, it's a closed system.
32:22 So it wouldn't be contaminated by other things.
32:26 Radioactivity is a very interesting thing.
32:30 I'm not sure if you can see this Little Rock right here,
32:33 but this Little Rock is uranium ore.
32:36 I've done a couple lectures north of the border and you
32:40 will be happy to know that our border guards can pick up
32:44 something like this that is radioactive and stop me and
32:47 ask me for one hour to explain why I would be carrying
32:50 something radioactive over the border.
32:52 Anyway this is uranium ore from the Spokane area.
32:58 It is as I speak decaying, the uranium in this is decaying.
33:02 It is sending off little bits of particles in different
33:05 directions and if you had a Geiger counter on this you
33:08 would be able to pick up little beep sounds of particles coming
33:15 off of that, so that is what we are talking about.
33:17 Radiometric dating, you do not date, listen carefully,
33:20 you do not date sedimentary rocks, at least it is much
33:23 more difficult, you date igneous rocks.
33:27 You date rocks that were liquid at one time
33:30 and then cooled.
33:31 That is the standard way of dating rocks and we will let
33:34 you know why in just a little bit.
33:36 Now here is the concept of half-lives.
33:38 This is just riveting, hang in there.
33:41 Half-lives, this is the way they measure radiometric decay.
33:46 Understand that time is measured, and this is all about
33:51 time, time is measured at the rate in which things decay
33:56 from the parent material to daughter material.
34:00 When it takes that long, let's say one period of time,
34:06 for things to get to half as much parent,
34:10 at this line as daughter, that is considered the time
34:14 we would call a half-life.
34:16 That is the way to measure it.
34:18 Now that means if you double that amount of time you will
34:21 continue that same rate and loose half of what was there
34:25 left, so now you are down to a quarter of it.
34:27 Another half-life and you are down to an eight of it and
34:31 so forth and so it goes.
34:33 When you look at all the amounts of the daughter and the
34:36 parent isotopes and you know how long it takes for that
34:40 to decay, it is a way of setting the clock and going back
34:42 and figuring, okay this has been decaying for so long.
34:45 That is the concept.
34:48 Now you have radiometric dating figured out.
34:51 Now let's talk about carbon-14 for just a little minute,
34:55 because carbon-14 is formed in an interesting way.
34:58 I will run that by again if you'd like to see it.
35:01 It took me a while to make so yes we will see it again.
35:06 You have a neutron coming from outer space and it finds
35:11 some nitrogen 14 in the atmosphere and smacks it apart
35:15 and knocks off a proton and leaves you with carbon-14.
35:20 Carbon-14 then goes from there into the trees,
35:23 usually into the trees or water, let's call the
35:27 trees for an illustration.
35:29 The trees become food, the plants in the world become
35:33 food two little critters, living things like mice.
35:36 They eat the leaves and get the carbon-14 into their
35:40 bodies that way.
35:42 Well then unfortunately they stop eating things and that
35:46 usually means that they die.
35:48 So carbon-14 does not continue to go inside their body.
35:52 That means that carbon-14 now begins to break down
35:55 to more stable things.
35:57 The measurement therefore, the carbon-14 is still left in
36:02 what ever organic materials you have is the way they
36:05 measure how long it has been since that was alive.
36:08 That is why they date organic material, that way carbon-14
36:11 loses some things it becomes nitrogen-14 again.
36:15 That is how they measure against regular carbon 12
36:18 and so on, so that is it in a nutshell.
36:21 The problem is carbon-14 dating is pretty well know and
36:26 here is an in-house comment about
36:28 the accuracy of carbon-14.
37:03 It's no wonder surely that the remaining have come
37:06 to be accepted.
37:08 So this is by Robert Lee writing in the
37:12 Anthropological Journal of Canada.
37:14 I have to say that since it was written there are number
37:17 concerns that carbon-14 dating it's probably been tweaked
37:20 and fixed a little bit.
37:21 They probably have better methods today.
37:23 Carbon-14 dating is interesting because it has only a
37:27 5700 year half-life.
37:29 So with a short half-life like that it means it quickly
37:32 breaks down and it is not good for millions of years.
37:35 You can't use it to date things millions of years,
37:38 only thousands of years.
37:39 It is also going on the assumption that the amount of
37:42 carbon in the air is consistent.
37:44 There is a problem with that too because recently they've
37:48 done, even from our last few years of nuclear testing,
37:52 and I'm not exactly sure of all the physics involved with
37:55 this but somehow or other really recent dates are now eschewed
38:00 because of the atomic testing they have done.
38:02 It has messed up the atmosphere and so it has bumped
38:05 off the way of measuring the consistent numbers
38:09 in the atmosphere.
38:10 So they can only go older than 50 or 100 years.
38:13 It's got to be older to get past that, the change in the
38:17 atmosphere, so it is assuming the atmosphere stays the same.
38:20 Now the flood account, the flood would have been most
38:23 definitely changing the carbon levels in the atmosphere.
38:26 And we will talk a little bit about that so it sets
38:28 the clock a little bit off.
38:29 Well I'm giving you a lot in a hurry.
38:32 I did one thing that every guy that has ever been born
38:36 wants to do, and that is on my 25th wedding anniversary I
38:40 walked were lava was flowing out.
38:43 I played in the lava, isn't that what everyone wants to do?
38:48 Guys, is that not cool?
38:49 That is so awesome.
38:54 We went to Hawaii for our wedding anniversary,
38:56 which is not a bad idea, right ladies?
38:59 Hawaii is good for wedding anniversaries and that will work
39:02 It happened we scheduled our days on the big Island and
39:05 Kilauea beckoned.
39:07 Kilauea is still erupting after all these years.
39:10 The longest continuous eruption in the world.
39:13 I am not sure what the years are now, I want to say
39:15 30 or 40, something like that, it's been a few years
39:18 that it has been erupting.
39:19 The stuff was flowing down the side of the hill so I took
39:22 out to find it and the Park Ranger said it is up there
39:25 where you see the vent, but mirages from heat,
39:28 that is where it is.
39:29 I'm going to go there, so I walked miles up there and it
39:32 took me quite a while, but I found a place where it was
39:34 coming out and I took a long stick.
39:36 I will tell you what lava is hot.
39:39 I knew what you have heard is true, lava is hot.
39:42 That is as close as I could get and I was really feeling
39:45 it there and you'll see it set my walking stick on fire.
39:48 One of the things I wanted to do just for the fun of it,
39:51 and probably entirely illegal, was I brought a little
39:55 bit of lava back with me.
39:56 I got my stick and stuck it to this metal cup and put
40:01 it in there and walkout with it.
40:03 If you're in a national Park you are not supposed to do
40:06 that, but anyway there is acres of it being formed as we
40:09 speak and I think they won't be short.
40:14 I'd stuck it in here and I would really like to know what the
40:17 Potassium Argon dating is on this.
40:19 We will talk a little now about how they date lava.
40:23 I was there when it was born so I think I know the date.
40:27 I'm not sure what the science would be as they look at it.
40:30 This was a picture I took up close with this stuff oozing
40:33 out, very interesting, it is just amazing as you look
40:36 through some cracks in the rock and see the rivers flowing
40:40 underneath more rapidly.
40:41 Very interesting.
40:43 The way that they date things is:
40:49 most radiometric dating that dates into the millions of
40:53 years is done off of lava, almost all, 80% or so.
40:58 As you will see in a minute.
40:59 Potassium 40 to Aragon 40 is generally the method
41:03 used for dating rocks.
41:05 Now the potassium to Aragon half-life is 1 in a quarter
41:08 billion years, so has lots of age, its a long scale.
41:12 Remember carbon-14 is only 57 hundred years.
41:14 We have a long one here that breaks down very slowly,
41:18 so it is good for very old age supposedly.
41:21 Here are probably the most common ways of dating for long
41:25 ages, not carbon-14, but for long ages, millions of years.
41:29 Potassium argon has pretty much been used for 80% of the
41:33 time, I'm not sure that is true now.
41:35 Isochron dating is more common, but I think they still use
41:38 Potassium Argon as something of a base.
41:40 Now here is the issue, again the lava are in these layers.
41:45 These layers date out to millions of years in between the
41:50 fossils according to the method that we saw.
41:53 Lava flows date to millions of years.
41:55 That is the issue of trying to figure out how, if the biblical
41:59 account is correct and if the fossil record being present
42:03 because of a flood, how are we getting dates like this in
42:06 between the layers?
42:08 A tough question, I told you it was a tough question.
42:11 Now here's the other thing that is over on the other side
42:14 of the coin, issues for dating.
42:16 We are going to take a look at Radiometric
42:18 dating anomalies.
42:19 Radiometric dating does not always agree with itself.
42:22 It is just one issue, one answer, it is not a complete one
42:26 It is a partial one.
42:28 Here is an example of dates not agreeing.
42:33 This is a cutaway and it shows where they dated from two
42:37 different places of rock.
42:38 At the top they dated a flow that came down at the side of
42:41 the canyon there and they got these differences of years.
42:44 MY means 1 million years.
42:49 So here is one that is only 100,000 years, oh that is
42:55 17 million years, so that is quite a range there.
43:00 100 thousand to 17 million.
43:02 Here are billions of years this is just on the top and it
43:06 is a tremendous difference in the different methods of
43:10 dating the same rock.
43:12 Then just for interest they dated the Cárdenas basalt way
43:16 down at the bottom, and they got years they were actually
43:20 for the most part younger than the rocks on top.
43:22 So there's something not quite right with the clock there.
43:26 This is just one illustration, having said that, we still
43:30 have some challenges.
43:32 Mount Saint Helens lava was formed in 1986.
43:34 You would say oh wait a minute 1980.
43:36 The lava flowed in 86, we got some lava but it didn't make
43:41 the news so much.
43:42 Millions of years, see the domes that were formed from then
43:46 are giving quite a bit older dates in the millions of years.
43:49 We know obviously that that cannot be so.
43:53 Sometimes there is a problem with radiometric dating.
43:56 Here's the sense some matrix and based on the level that it
43:59 is on the geological column.
44:01 It is assumed to be 225 million years old.
44:06 Here is a piece of wood fragment that was inside the
44:10 sandstone encircled and it was carbon dated to
44:14 much more recent.
44:16 We have many kinds of things like that, it is almost when
44:18 you have a piece of carbon in some layer that it is
44:21 going to date differently.
44:23 Here is another one from the Jurassic period and yet
44:27 20,000 years to 28,000 years this carbonized tree stump.
44:31 Sometimes we get that, but now let's take a look at some
44:34 other issues and that is living fossils.
44:37 I have a few things to show you from up front here.
44:40 First of all living fossils are always a challenge.
44:43 Here's a great story from recent history,
44:48 reasonably recent history, here's a Coelacanth.
44:51 Here is a copy of the same thing
44:54 you see up there basically.
44:56 That is an impression of what was thought to be a 410
45:00 million-year-old, that's 80% of the
45:03 geological column almost.
45:05 410 million-year-old fossil of an interesting looking,
45:09 an archaic looking fish called Coelacanth, and they lasted
45:12 for hundreds of millions of years according to the standard
45:16 chronology up until almost the end of the Cretaceous period.
45:20 That is the period when the dinosaurs disappeared.
45:31 They would talk about here is evolution, because if you look
45:37 at the two lower fins there, they have a pair of fins that
45:42 looked like something that would grow into feet over a
45:46 few years so it looked like it was on its way to land
45:50 dwelling kind of animal.
45:51 So they were all excited about this and felt this was
45:54 evolution in Variety.
45:59 Of course you know the story in 1938 of Margaret Latimer.
46:03 Marjorie Latimer a museum director down in South Africa.
46:07 She heard that a local fisherman caught an interesting
46:10 Fish and she checked it out and acquired it.
46:14 She tried terribly to find a freezer, or a refrigerator
46:19 big enough to put it in.
46:20 She couldn't find it and the thing was decaying, so she
46:23 reluctantly had it stuffed.
46:26 All the innerds were lost, by the time science found
46:30 out about it they were deeply unhappy because they
46:33 lost the rest of the fish.
46:34 It was obvious they have found a Coelacanth, a living
46:38 Coelacanth and it made the news and to this day they keep
46:42 finding Coelacanths around the Comoros Islands in
46:45 Madagascar and South the Indian Ocean on the east
46:48 side of Southern Africa.
46:50 They have been finding literally I think now the number
46:53 up to hundreds of finding these including they have
46:56 video taped them and interestingly they have seen
47:00 them along the bottom of the ocean where they feed and live.
47:04 They noted that what they use these fins for are swimming.
47:11 It is just a thought!
47:13 So they are not walking along the bottom.
47:18 So that is interesting and here's a living fossil, probably
47:20 the most famous example of a living fossil.
47:23 Again it hasn't changed hardly at all in 400 million years.
47:29 That's according to the standard chronology.
47:31 That is quite an interesting living fossil.
47:33 Have you ever been to Massachusetts
47:35 and seen these things?
47:37 There on the beach and they give me the jitters.
47:40 Anyway a horseshoe crab today and here's a Horseshoe Crab
47:44 fossil supposedly 400 million years old.
47:47 It hasn't changed too much, it looks primitive and old.
47:49 It looks weird, like a space crab or something.
47:54 But anyway it hasn't changed much in the fossil records.
47:57 So consider another living fossil.
48:00 Now they just recently found this ant.
48:03 They had a couple and they fell apart before they could
48:07 study it, and then somebody else found one about
48:09 three or four years ago.
48:11 A graduate student found one of these blind funny looking
48:17 ants and the name of this ant in Latin now.
48:22 Is Ant from Mars, because it is such an unusual looking
48:26 ant and the significance of this ant is that this is a
48:30 virtual clone of what they thought the oldest known
48:34 fossilized record of ants were.
48:37 They thought they were extinct, this kind of ant yet after
48:41 120 million years they found one alive.
48:46 So here is another living fossil recently found, and it
48:49 hadn't changed significantly in 120 million years.
48:54 Gingko Tree leaves, I don't know if you know what a Gingko
49:00 tree looks like, everybody likes ginkgo trees.
49:03 Here is a Gingko tree fossil that is supposedly 50 million
49:06 years old, A fossil impression that I am holding right
49:10 here is very similar to the one up there.
49:12 Right here is a leaf from a living Gingko tree,
49:17 can you see that?
49:19 It is very, very similar.
49:20 It fits in there real well, not a lot of change in Gingko
49:24 leaves in all the years, and even the earliest ones that
49:28 date up to 270 million years are very similar to the ones
49:32 that are 50 million years old in the fossil record
49:34 according to the standard chronology.
49:37 So we have these kinds of living fossils, even all the
49:39 changes that have taken place in terms of the environment
49:42 world it seems like they haven't changed much.
49:45 Now let me give you a story that is very interesting it
49:47 has to do with a pine tree.
49:49 This is in Australia not terribly far from Sydney.
49:54 This is one of the parks there called
49:57 Wollemi National Park in Australia and there are a number
50:00 of canyons and deep areas in which you can climb down in
50:04 and see these different kinds of habitats.
50:07 It is a quite a bit of different habitats there.
50:09 Well about 14 years ago one of the Park Rangers, a young
50:13 man named David Noble was walking and hiking and thought
50:16 he would check out a few areas that he had been into before.
50:20 When he got down into the park in a certain area he found
50:24 some trees that he had never seen before.
50:27 He wasn't sure exactly what they were.
50:29 As it turned out he unwittingly discovered and brought
50:33 some samples back and showed it to some other scientists.
50:37 He came back with what appeared to be what is now called
50:40 the Wollemi Pine.
50:42 The Wollemi Pine, here is one right here, a genuine one.
50:45 A living fossil, how about that?
50:49 This is from the ones found in Australia only 14 years ago.
50:53 As it stands today there are only 100 living mature
50:57 trees left standing in this park and a very well-kept
51:01 secret area, but this tree was not known to exist yet
51:05 here it is a living fossil that has been discovered.
51:10 It is an unusual tree, but beautiful and they are
51:15 propagating them now and selling them to people who
51:19 are interested in that.
51:20 It is a beautiful living fossil, but up to 14 years ago
51:24 as far as people knew, they were all fossils.
51:28 But apparently there they are.
51:30 So we have examples that are being found almost regularly
51:33 now, living fossils that haven't apparently changed.
51:36 It is an issue for dating the Earth.
51:38 What other issues do we have for dating the Earth?
51:40 Miracles of preservations.
51:42 Miracles that should not be easily explained if you
51:45 have the Uniformitarian model.
51:47 These are some fossil leaves that are from Australia
51:50 that date to be 60 million years old and still had some
51:52 flexibility to them, still had some feel to them.
52:03 Of course you know about the soft tissue that they found
52:05 in there which is a difficult issue to explain how
52:08 well it is preserved after supposedly 65 million years
52:11 of being buried.
52:12 Again it is very difficult to explain if you have the
52:15 standard model and looking through standard glasses
52:17 of the Uniformitarian model.
52:18 They have found what they call mummies, again I have a
52:22 problem with calling it a mummy myself because I think
52:25 of skin, like an Egyptian mummy or Inca mummy
52:27 or something like that, that are still present.
52:30 These are molds and are perfectly beautiful and they
52:35 don't quite get it either so I can understand why they call
52:37 it a mummy and it is well preserved.
52:39 A Edmontosaurus found in 1912 and they found another
52:42 one more recently, a few years ago, and they are
52:45 calling it Leonardo.
52:46 But anyway Leonardo is on display too and remarkable
52:51 preserved specimen and harder to explain if you believe
52:56 in 65 million years as the absolute, most recent
52:59 they could be.
53:00 So these are some issues.
53:02 So Uniformitarianism, again everything that should
53:05 be measured at current rates, but if you use the same
53:08 model to look at various other issues of dating you would
53:12 come up with more recent dates.
53:14 Here are just a few of them that I threw up there and I
53:16 wish we had time to talk about them.
53:18 But here are some of the things that if you go with the
53:21 Uniformitarian model we would give it a different age.
53:24 A much younger age for most of these.
53:26 So the issue of aging is still around, their are a lot of
53:30 conflicting things that depends on the glasses
53:33 you are looking through.
53:34 Here is a natural gas pipe that is only a couple years old,
53:38 fairly new and found out they were getting gas through it
53:40 like they should have been and opened it and found this
53:43 crystallization that had gone in there, it must have been
53:48 heavily chemical, mineral gas that was being caught up.
53:52 But look how quickly it filled in a short amount of time.
53:57 We know that coal, we know that oil, petrification or
54:02 things becoming rock, rockification, Opal and
54:06 stalactites can be made more quickly than probably
54:10 standardly been talked about.
54:12 Let me talk about the stalactites for just a minute.
54:15 Have you ever been to Yellowstone and then to Mammoth
54:18 Hot Springs, when you come to the usual place, the
54:21 observation place there, you see that the rock is growing
54:24 all around you.
54:25 If you go there and come back a couple of years later
54:28 you will see this hot water bringing these minerals over
54:30 rock and it is growing as you watch.
54:32 There is a rapidness to it, it depends on how much water
54:37 and heat but you can actually make quite a difference in
54:41 the rock formation in a fairly short amount of time.
54:44 Rapid formation calcium carbonate rocks.
54:48 This is the stuff we are talking about when we talk about
54:51 stalactites like this.
54:53 You've been to Carl's caverns like this and you see a
54:56 little drop falling from the stalactites and the usual way
55:00 we will say this cave has taken 100,000 years to make.
55:04 Well it probably would have if it came at that rate of one
55:08 little drop every little while.
55:10 But the question might be, has it always been that rate?
55:13 That is the Uniformitarian and way of looking at the rate.
55:15 What if there was a lot of water earlier, much more rapid,
55:20 could it form, could draw the mineral out dissolve it and
55:23 then reform it through the stalactites, which is the way it
55:27 happened, or could it be done rapidly?
55:29 Again it is a possibility and it depends upon the glasses
55:33 you are looking through.
55:34 So remember when we talk about decay, and we talked
55:38 about some of the issues of things falling apart that
55:41 the Bible does talk about, thinks falling apart.
56:02 So there is some kind of decay going on.
56:04 It is a law that we see on planet Earth.
56:07 The Bible even has a reference to it that the whole
56:11 creation is groaning.
56:13 It is not the way it was originally created, but it is
56:16 feeling the effects, problems of this planet and it's
56:19 actually under a bondage of corruption, it's groaning
56:23 into decay and looking forward to a better world.
56:26 It's nice and on our last talk we will talk about how
56:29 things end up, whether you are looking at the Big Bang
56:33 theory or another theory, but the good news is that for
56:37 some of us who believe this, there is a place
56:39 coming that Jesus described.
56:42 A place where it says that neither moth nor rust destroys.
56:46 So there is no more decay either in the chemical or the
56:50 biological world in the place that God has prepared.
56:53 So apparently He has an intent on fixing things
56:57 that fall apart.
56:58 That is good news.
57:00 So when was the beginning?
57:04 It depends on how you look at the data.
57:07 What glasses you look through.
57:09 Whether you are using just observation or whether you will
57:12 add narrative also as well.
57:14 If it is an authoritative source or not.
57:16 I would have to tell you that if you didn't have narrative,
57:19 I think the data is conflicting, but that is just my
57:22 feel about it and we welcome your thoughts as well.
57:25 Thank you very much for coming and I hope you enjoyed
57:28 the presentation.

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Revised 2014-12-17