Wrong Question

One of the foremost sites for young earth creationism is Answers in Genesis, a site that claims that the world is six thousand years old and that science supports their view. It does not, as we shall see. I'm going to present one of their articles and show how, with a few minutes of research, all of its claims can be proven to be false.

The article in question is Heavens Declare Young Solar System.

Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. But what do the heavens declare about the age of the universe? Recent observations confirm that the universe is only a few thousand years old, as the Bible says.

First of all, the Bible does not say that the universe is only a few thousand years old. That's right, nowhere in the Bible is the age of the earth mentioned. Young earthers get such a young age for the earth by adding up the ages of the people mentioned in Genesis. The most prominent person to do this was James Ussher, who said that the world was created on October 23, 4004 BC. However modern biblical scholars do not think that Genesis was meant to be read as a literal account of the age of the earth at all!

You see, all of the countries surrounding Israel were polytheistic, worshiping the sun, moon, river, and other such natural elements. Genesis was written to say, in effect, that while they worship the gods of those things our God made all of them. The ancient Hebrews knew this, and they probably never read Genesis in the literal manner that some people do today. Creationists are asking questions of the Bible that it never claimed to answer.

Comets are small, low density, icy “asteroids” that orbit the sun. But their lifetime is limited. As they come near the sun, some of their icy material is vaporized and blown away—forming a “tail.”

The actual body of the comet, called the “nucleus,” is very small, ranging from 1 to 30 miles (1–50 km) in diameter. It also has very low density, certainly less than that of water. Earth-based observers cannot see the nucleus. Instead they see only the gases and dust particles that come from the nucleus, including a large glowing gas ball, called a coma, and the ion and dust tails. The gas (ion) tail is blown away from the sun by solar wind, and the dust tail is forced back by the pressure of photons. The presence of tails and comas tells us that comets are constantly losing mass.

Comets, as well as their orbits, are greatly affected by the planets. For instance, Jupiter has corralled about 45 comets within its orbit and evidently can destroy comets; Jupiter’s gravitational field can cause comets to break apart and even collide with the planet itself. In addition, the SOHO spacecraft has regularly recorded comets being completely destroyed as they encounter the sun.

Many comets have been observed to break up or at least partially disintegrate. In 1852 Comet Biela was observed to divide in two, and in 1872, a meteor shower appeared in its place. Indeed, nearly all meteor showers are linked to the disintegration of known comets.

This information is all true, to my knowledge.

It is apparent that comets are temporary. And from their orbits, we find that comets do not just fall in from interplanetary space. They appear to be true members of the solar system, and so they are limited in number. If the solar system were 4.6 billion years old, our complete supply of comets should have been exhausted long ago. Instead, comets are plentiful.

To resolve this challenge, uniformitarian astronomers believe that long-period comets arise from the Oort cloud, a hypothesized cloud of comet nuclei with a radius of about 50,000 AU (an astronomical unit is the average distance between the earth and sun). Evolutionists Carl Sagan and Ann Druvan admit in their book entitled Comet, “Many scientific papers are written each year about the Oort Cloud, its properties, its origin, its evolution. Yet there is not yet a shred of direct observational evidence for its existence.”

Here the lies begin. A quick search tells me that the book Comet was written in 1985. It's a favorite tactic of creationists to use out of date sources. Would you read a newspaper from 1985 and expect it to tell you accurately what is going on in the world? In 1985 we had never discovered an extra-solar planet, we had only discovered a handful of Jupiter and Saturn's moons, and the Hubble Space Telescope was still years away from launch. And we do have direct evidence for the existance of the Oort Cloud: the comets themselves! And two objects, 90377 Sedna and (148209) 2000 CR105 are believed to be part of the Oort Cloud.

Likewise, the shorter period comets are believed to come from the Kuiper belt, a disk of icy asteroids beginning at the orbit of Pluto (40 AU) and extending out to about 55 AU. But such objects have different characteristics from the comets, so they cannot explain the wealth of comets we see today.

I think that they're trying to say that the comets from the Kuiper Belt could not be the comets we see in the sky, but they're wrong. A quick search shows that the current theory is that approach to the sun alters the composition of the comets, matching what we see in our sky.

The Moon is Still Alive . . .
The moon is very much alive, geologically speaking. Ever since telescopes have been available, observers have been reporting many color changes, bright and colored spots and streaks, clouds, hazes, veils, and other phenomena on the moon. Since these phenomena are short lived, they are called Transient Lunar Phenomena (TLP). These speak of geologic activity.

This is just plain wrong. Firstly, there is some debate as to whether TLPs actually exist, or are just mistakes similar to UFO sightings. Secondly, several explinations have been proposed for TLPs, including outgassing, micrometeorite impact, and mistakes in observation. Admittedly outgassing would indicate a kind of geologic activity, but nothing on the scale they are claiming.

From 1900 to 1960, many of these observations were dismissed and ignored because the prevailing belief was that the moon is 4.5 billion years old and has been geologically dead for the last 3 billion years. (As the argument went, since the moon is about one-fourth of the size of the earth, heavy masses would fall to the center, the moon would cool much faster than the earth, and no magma would be left.) But the number of TLP observations became so overwhelming that mainline publications began to discuss them. In 1968, NASA published the Chronological Catalog of Reported Lunar Events.

As early as March 1787, William Herschel, the discoverer of Uranus and an ardent lunar observer, reported, “I perceive three volcanoes in different places of the dark side of the moon. Two of them are either extinct, or otherwise in a state of going to break out. . . . The third shows an actual erupt ion of fire, or luminous matter.” The next night he continued, “The volcano burns with greater violence than last night. I believe the diameter . . . to be about three miles.” More than 300 TLP’s have been seen in the Aristarchus region alone. This and hundreds of similar observations point to the youthfulness of the moon, as the Bible tells us.

Remember what I said about outdated sources? They're doing it again. That 1968 report on TLPs was published a year before we had ever even landed on the moon, and in 1787 science was still in its infancy! The fact is, we know a lot about the interior of the moon, mostly thanks to the Apollo moon landings. This is a good source, if a little hard to understand. We know that the moon is not geologically active, we've done the science. The best AIG can offer to the contrary is some dross about TLPs and a few outdated sources.

We have been taught that solar system bodies shine only by reflected light. Is this true? No, not for the Jovian gas giants, Jupiter and Neptune. In fact, the power excess for Jupiter is 3 x 1017 watts.1 Jupiter actually radiates nearly twice as much power as it receives from the sun, but mostly in the infrared. That’s enough power to continuously burn three million-billion 100-watt light bulbs. Saturn puts out half the energy but is one-quarter the mass, so it produces twice the energy per unit mass than Jupiter. Neptune gives off well over twice as much energy as it receives. Uranus’ energy production is somewhat in doubt, but even it appears to give off slightly more than it receives. This means that each of these three planets has an alternate energy source. What is it?

Jupiter puts out nearly twice the energy it receives from the sun. This makes sense if the planet is only thousands of years old.The usual explanation for Jupiter’s extra energy is that it is shrinking. This converts gravitational energy into internal heat and radiation. Can this explain the extra energy? No. Shrinkage alone does not produce enough energy. Others have said that helium is raining down on the core, releasing additional gravitational energy. While that may be the explanation for Saturn and Uranus, whose surfaces are helium depleted, observations of the vibrations of the surface (asteroseismology) have shown this is not correct for Jupiter.

Researchers have hypothesized that nuclear reactions are occurring in the core of Jupiter as a result of burning deuterium (heavy hydrogen). This requires a core temperature of 160,000 K, some 8 times hotter than the present models of Jupiter. Will this produce the extra energy? To make this work, most of the deuterium available throughout Jupiter had to simultaneously descend to its core when Jupiter formed so the deuterium would be hot enough to ignite. Once it ignited, it would burn happily for 10 billion years or more and keep Jupiter hot. This would give us a hot Jupiter like the one we see today. At first, this solution appears to be ingenious. The snag is that the deuterium layer has to assemble itself at just the right time and at the right place to sustain Jupiter’s core temperature. The same unlikely event must be repeated on Neptune.

The definition of a star is any large, self-gravitating gaseous sphere with continued nuclear reactions in its core. Our sun is a star. It burns hydrogen in its core. But if Jupiter and Neptune have nuclear reactions in their cores, then they are dwarf suns. There would be three suns in our solar system.

They actually cite a few sources here. The problem is that they are all creationist books. Not one reliable scientific source supports their ridiculous claim that Jupiter and Neptune are stars. It's also worth noting that while they claim that gravitational collapse could not provide the necessary energy, they don't give us any calculations to back up their claim. Actual scientists disagree with them, saying that gravitational collapse is enough to account for the heat Jupiter gives off, and the actual scientists have actual evidence and actual calculations to back up their claims.

There is a simpler explanation. God created the Jovian planets. The heat energy comes from the creative work of God and any gravitational energy produced since then. Since they are young and quite massive, the Jovian planets have not had time to cool down. Are hot Jovian planets a problem to creationists? Absolutely not! They are only a problem to evolutionists.

This is another telling mistake. This article has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution is biology, this was all about astronomy. Astronomy has nothing to do with evolution. These guys don't even know what science they're talking about!

Fast Facts
Spiral galaxies rotate much too quickly for an old universe. They would be twisted beyond recognition if they were really as old as secular astronomers claim.
The magnetic fields of planets and moons in our solar system are consistent with their age of a few thousand years, but are much too strong for an age of billions of years.
The debris shed by disintegrating comets is what causes meteor showers. Since earth intersects such a debris field once each year, most meteor showers are annual.

As usual, no citations or evidence of any kind is presented to back up these claims. Also, secular astronomers? I'm fairly sure that many astronomers are Christian. They just aren't young earthers.

A Final Word
The Bible can be trusted in every area it addresses, including its scientific and historical truth. It is God’s Book, which means what it says in a plain, forthright manner. While the Bible’s revealed insights about science and history glorify the Creator and help us know Him better, its main purpose is to convey to people, like you and me, our need of Jesus Christ as Savior and God’s desire for us to live a fulfilled, joyful life with Him.

The Bible never claims to address science at all, because it's not a science book. It's a book about religion, and a darn good one at that. But trying to get science from the Bible is like trying to find a recipe in a book about ancient Egypt. It's just not there.