What are Young-Earth Creationist scientific proofs and are they tenable?

Answer 1

Not only do young earth creation scientists have plenty of evidence, much of the evidence they have comes from accepted mainstream science. Thus if it is contended (although totally without any examples) that creation scientists do not have proofs, then one is simply ignoring mainstream science, much of which is produced by scientists who believe in evolution. Mainstream science (in terms of the evidence not the personal beliefs of evolutionists against the evidence) does not support evolutionary beliefs no matter how many times it is stated 'evolution is a proven fact.' Saying this and it actually being so are two totally different things.

The evidence which YEC's have is both positive and negative. Positive, in the sense that the evidence points positively to a creator. Negative, in that there is plenty of evidence which refutes the errors of evolution. It is also comprehensive as well in that it covers every conceivable area of scientific endeavor, including evidence relating to the age of the earth and universe, since the age issue is a key difference in ideology between the two positions.

Some Evidence for the Young-Earth Creationist Position:

Since this is a big issue it is difficult to summarize in a small section. However here are some of the key arguments:

Laws of Science (with no known exception) such as the Law of biogenesis (life only comes from life) and the Second Law of Thermodynamics (the law of entropy) do not support evolution.

The fossil record does not demonstrate the millions of intermediate forms but instead 'stasis'. That is organisms stay the same over alleged multi millions of years of evolutionary time, even including into species that are still living today.

Genetics also shows that there are definite limits to change. No known mechamism exists to create new genetic information for one organism to change into something else. Mutations demonstrate a 'downhill' path and natural selection works on existing genetic information and cannot add new genetic instructions. This all points to the existence of an all-wise creator who not only created the information but the means by which the information could be understood and translated into characteristics of an organism.

Biochemistry demonstrates the impossibility of life, even the simplest form of life coming from non-living chemicals. Life is a creation not an accident.

Summary:

These arguments although highly simplified are all scientifically tenable.

Rebuttal of previous points

• "Evolution contradicts the second law" - this is complete nonsense. The second law says that in closed systems, entropy increases. First and foremost, biological systems and our planet are not closed at all. Huge amounts of energy go in and out every second. Even assuming that the solar system is a closed system, this says nothing about a subsystem of it; the local decrease in entropy in your body is more than made up by the later increase as energy is released and by the mere functioning of the sun. Even besides all that, evolution is just one aspect of life; this argument can only say that either no life is possible, or that all life must be allowed. It says nothing about one specific mechanism of life.
• The "law of biogenesis" - is not a law as so faithfully stated. The Miller-Urey experiment shows that it is perfectly possible to develop self-replicating molecules from complex organic molecules from simple organic molecules from simple compounds and elements, perfectly within the environment known to have existed during and around the time of life's first appearances.
• "Fossils records show stasis, not evolution" - as amatter of fact, they show both. The original hypothesis of gradual but minute change has been replaced by the "punctuated equilibirium" theory, which specifically states that organisms remain quite similar for huge periods of time, then are affected by some circumstance which forces natural selection on a massive scale and in a comparatively short period of time (e.g. a few million years after a stable period of 20 million years).
• Mutations - are the obvious mechanism of new information formation, which is denied to exist. Information is altered from what it originally was during the phases of replication and of "zipping up". As quite plainly stated in many science textbooks, mutations are "often harmless, sometimes lethal, but also sometimes beneificial". All of these imply the key word "different" - different from what the would have, should have and could have been.
• "God did it" - is a completely and inherently unscientific claim, which simply demonstrates how the position of creationists is based on religious (and often political) motives, not scientific ones.

Summary: These arguments are false. Their supporters make stuff up to appear correct.

Answer 2

Young-Earth Creationists do not have scientific proofs. The entire premis of this belief is that The Bible seems to state that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, so therefore it must be. The 'science' of Young-Earth Creationists largely consists of attempting to undermine support for the work of genuine scientists. Even the attempts to undermine true science can be dismissed quite easily, so none of the 'science' of Young-Earth Creationists is tenable. A review of just 7 common Young-Earth arguments follows:
1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast
Just as inner planets revolve in stable orbits around the sun much faster than outer planets, so stars revolve in stable orbits about the galactic centre, with the inner stars moving faster than the outer ones. It is alleged that the observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape. This apparently implies that stellar orbits are unstable, whereas they are not. This is spurious science and has no bearing on the truth of evolution.

2. Comets disintegrate too quickly
Each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses some of its material, meaning that comets that come into close orbit must have a limited life. Young-Earth Creationists like to point out that many comets have typical ages of 10,000 years - an undisputed fact if we measure their age from when they first entered a close orbit. This proves nothing relevant to evolution of life on Earth.

3. Not enough mud on the sea floor
Each year, erosion dumps billions of tonnes of dirt and rock in the ocean. This material initially accumulates as loose sediment, such as mud and sand on the ocean floor. Young-Earth Creationists claim that present rates imply that the oceans should be massively choked with mud dozens of kilometres deep.

This is a disingenuous 'proof' that overlooks some fundamental facts. One is that the rate of deposition is not constant. When the Earth was young and consisted of hard, igneous rock, there was very little deposition. When some of the hard, igneous rock became overlaid with softer, secondary rock, erosion increased. Much of present-day erosion is not even erosion of rocks - it is erosion of soils that were laid down in the much more recent past and which are removed relatively quickly.

Another fact that creationists prefer to overlook is that the sediment does not remain as sand or mud. Deep layers of sand on the ocean floor are under immense pressure and turn into sandstone. Mud may turn into shale, and so on. Even if these secondary rocks remained on the ocean floor, it would simply mean that the oceans would sit on top of the new floor. Easy.
But the secondary rocks do not stay on the ocean floor - that is why we have many of our non-igneous rocks that are now on dry land. Continental drift and geological uplifting is constantly changing the shape of the Earth - raising up new mountain ranges and pushing up parts of the sea bed high above the water level, while lowering others. Even creationists admit that these forces exist, although they try to minimise their duration.

4. Not enough sodium in the sea
Every year, rivers and other sources dump millions of tonnes of salt into the ocean, where it accumulates. Young-Earth Creationists say that if the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at present input and output rates. Biologists would probably say that this is long enough for evolution of species to have taken place, but in any case the claim contains elementary flaws. One is that the rate of salt accumulation is not constant. When the Earth was young and consisted of hard, igneous rock, there was very little erosion and therefore little salt deposited into the oceans. As erosion increased, so salt accumulation increased.

5. The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast
The claim here is that total energy stored in the Earth's magnetic field has steadily decreased by a factor of 2.7 over the past 1000 years, meaning that the magnetic field must have been much stronger even just a few thousand years ago. You may wonder what the strength of the magnetic field has to do with the reality of evolution. So do I. Especially when even creationists acknowledge that the magnetic field has reversed many times in the lif of the Earth.

6. Many strata are too tightly bent
In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. This is in line with the explanation I provided earlier, that the Earths crust is dynamic, constantly (although at a barely perceptible rate on the human scale) moving buckling and uplifting. The claim is that some formations "imply" that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition. Even if this is true, you may wonder what this has to do with the reality of evolution.

7. Injected sandstone shortens geologic 'ages'
It is claimed that the Cambrian Sawatch sandstone of the Ute Pass fault west of Colorado Springs was still unsolidified when it was extruded up to the surface during the uplift of the Rocky Mountains, "allegedly" 70 million years ago. It is further claimed that It is very unlikely that the sandstone would not solidify during the estimated 430 million years it was underground.

Well, I am unfamiliar with the Ute Pass fault, but I can say that sandstone does not "solidify" - it forms when solid sands are compressed under great pressure. At most, the sandstone would have still have been solid, granulated sand 70 million years ago, but certainly not a liquid. And the fact of whether it was sand or sandstone simply depends on factors such as the pressure it had been under. In any case, this simply has no bearing on the reality of evolution.

For more information on creationism, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

For a review of the history of geology, please visit Why_do_most_scientists_think_Earth_is_4.5_billion_years_old

Answer 3

Here are some arguments for Creation or against Evolution.

These point to Divine Creation:

• The staggering complexity of every organ and every cell in the human body.
  
• The vastness of our minds and emotions.
  
• The fact that the universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of atheism.)
  
• The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
  

See: More detailed evidence of Creation

Also:

1) The glaring lack of transitional fossils has been noted by the evolutionists themselves, such as this statement from the famous paleontologist and evolutionist George G. Simpson; quote: "The regular lack of transitional fossils is not confined to primates alone, but is an almost universal phenomenon."
"The lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled" (Nilsson, N. Heribert).
"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation" (Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought).
2) Instances of falsifying of evidence by evolutionists, such as Haeckel's drawings, Archaeoraptor, the Cardiff "specimen," and Piltdown Man.
"Haeckel exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions, in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent. His drawings never fooled embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. The drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the standard student textbooks of biology. Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because textbooks copy from previous texts. We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks (Stephen Gould).
Dr. Jonathan Wells published a book in 2002 entitled Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells states that the book shows that "the best-known 'evidences' for Darwin's theory have been exaggerated, distorted or even faked."

3) Creationists see the "survival of the fittest" and the dating of rock layers by fossils as being perfect tautologies.

4) The fact that some qualified, educated, normal scientists do not believe in evolution. Or at least question it, even if they still preach evolution: "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species" (Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum).
"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. It amazes me that this is swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest" (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner).

5) The fact that there is a shared, worldwide tradition among every ancient society that the world was created.

6) Evolving of new organs or species has not been witnessed during known history.

7) Mutations are harmful, not beneficial. One of the tasks of DNA and of long-term breeding is to avoid or repair any changes brought about by mutations. This means that our genetic apparatus is programmed to resist change.

8) Mutations, even if beneficial, do not create new organs.

9) The fact that a great number of fossils have been found in the "wrong" rock-layers according to what evolutionary Paleontology would require.

10) The fact that you need DNA to make DNA. No genetic code can be demonstrated to have arisen by chance, together with the ability to read that code and carry out its instructions. Information does not arise spontaneously; and there is an incredible amount of information in even the tiniest cell.
"A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations" (Michael Denton, author).
"The astounding structural complexity of a cell" (U.S. National Library of Medicine).
Concerning a single structure within a cell: "Without the motor protein, the microtubules don't slide and the cilium simply stands rigid. Without nexin, the tubules will slide against each other until they completely move past each other and the cilium disintegrates. Without the tubulin, there are no microtubules and no motion. The cilium is irreducibly complex. Like a mousetrap, it has all the properties of design and none of the properties of natural selection" (Michael Behe, prof. of biophysics).

11) The problem of the impossibility of abiogenesis in general. "The concept of abiogenesis is not science. It's fantasy" (J.L. Wile, Ph.D.).

12) The fact that evolution was once used as support for the belief that Blacks (or others) are less than highly-evolved humans. "Darwin was also convinced that the Europeans were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races" (Steven Rose, author). He also "reasoned that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females" (B. Kevics, author).

13. The first and second laws of thermodynamics point clearly to a Creator, since things undergo entropy rather than get more orderly over time.

14. "Radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age-estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often very different. There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists." William D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University.

15. "Even total rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus.)

16 a). At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found do not support a "billions of years" age for the Earth.
b) The amount of Sodium Chloride in the sea, also, is a small fraction of what the "old Earth" theory would postulate.
c) The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast to extrapolate a long age for the Earth.
d) The rate of accumulation of Moon-dust has been measured; and the amount of dust on the Moon was found to be vastly less than what scientists had predicted before the Moon-landings.

See: Problems in Evolutionary astronomy

e) Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this helium into the atmosphere can be measured. According to the Evolutionary age of the Earth there should be much more helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there.Also see:

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

Dissent against Darwin

The facts

Discovering Creation

Understanding Creation

Answer 4

Young-Earth Creationists argue that the Earth is only thousands of years old based on interpretations of the Bible, including genealogies and the story of the Great Flood. However, scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports an Earth that is billions of years old, through methods like radiometric dating and studying geological formations, making the Young-Earth Creationist claims scientifically untenable.