What evidence is there that the earth is thousands of years old rather than millions?

Part 1
If you hear and see the same thing over and over again, you are in the process of being “brainwashed.” Webster’s dictionary gives the definition as, “A forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, social, or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting regimented ideas.” As Adolph Hitler, who took the lives of 11 million innocent people using this technique, stated, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” The old earth argument fits this description perfectly.

The old earth paradigm was motivated and created basically to fit the evolutionary theory, which needs progressive change over significant time demonstrated in millions and billions of years. This belief is so deeply engraved in the minds of evolutionists, everything depends upon it. In fact, so many have vested in this pet theory that they become blinded to any alternatives. As we discussed last month, there are enormous difficulties in evaluating the age of rocks with the technique of radiometric dating because of all the questionable assumptions that have to be incorporated. Of course, this has been ignored because if there is a problem dating rocks with long ages, evolution will have nothing to stand on. There are numerous evidences to support a young earth that are censored from the public media and this article is the first of a three part series providing evidences for a young earth.

1. Dino bones are found with soft tissue.
An amazing discovery was made in 2004 when Dr. Mary Highby Schweiter of North Carolina State University and Montana University was the first to isolate soft fibrous tissue, remains of red blood cells and translucent blood vessels from a supposedly 65 million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex thigh bone. It was discovered in the Hell Creek formation, famous for numerous kinds of dinosaurs including Troodons, Edmontosaurus, Triceratops and many others found along with the famous T.rex. Schweiter, upon this unique discovery, overturned the tables of evolutionary paleontology, the study of fossils representing different life forms in the past. As reported by Discover Magazine, April 2006, in article entitled “Schweitzer’s Dangerous Discovery” states:

“By all the rules of paleontology, such traces of life should have long since drained from the bones. It’s a matter of faith among scientists that soft tissue can survive at most for a few tens of thousands of years, not the 65 million since T. rex walked what’s now the Hell Creek Formation in Montana.”

She was surprised herself, as the analysis revealed through her microscope put in question whether this was a fossil or not. As she states, “This is fossilized bone in the sense that it’s from an extinct animal but it doesn’t have a lot of characteristics of what people would call a fossil.” She admits that this discovery “certainly shows the microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way ….” She went on, stating, “It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. I said to the lab technician: ‘The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?’”

Schweitzer continued her research using the collagen which is protein in the bone and found that this protein was 58 % similar to chicken’s collagen and 51% to that of a frog’s. She also led a team of scientists to find microscopic structures (remains of red blood cells, fibrous tissue and translucent blood vessels) in a Duckbilled dinosaur dated 80 million years old very similar to the T. rex.

Carbon-14 Dating
Schweitzer’s discoveries naturally challenge long ages being buried in rock layers without decaying for over 65 million years. It should be noted that in the same Hell Creek formation where these unusual dinosaur remains have been found, the fossils were dated with a special radiometric method, Carbon-14, in which the results were in the range of 20 thousand years, not in millions of years. The dinosaur fossils were taken from Glendive, Montana, near the site of our Creation Studies Institute’s dig team of which I was part of and have dug over several years. The Carbon-14 dates were found on specimens taken from two fossilized thigh bones that were tested from a triceratops and a hadrosaur-type dinosaur.

The process of Carbon-14 dating is another radiometric method of dating objects that contain carbon. It is based on the assumption that Carbon-14 is formed in our upper atmosphere by cosmic rays. The Carbon-14 drifts down in the form of carbon dioxide gas to the lower atmosphere where it is absorbed into living bodies in a variety of ways. Since carbon is found in all living things, it can easily become a nutrient, a significant part of an animal’s diet in the form of plant or meat. When living things die and become a carcass, it begins then to eliminate Carbon-14. If a specimen has a lot of Carbon-14 compared to regular carbon, it is considered to be young. As time goes on, the carcass or fossil reduces its carbon 14 level in proportion to regular carbon. The older the object, the less Carbon-14 is in the fossil. Because the Carbon-14 decays quickly, a fossil containing carbon can only date in the range of thousands of years with a high level maximum of 58,000 to 62,000 years. The older ages are never used because the amount of Carbon-14 is so small that is difficult to measure without error.

How do creationists use Carbon-14 dating to prove the earth is young? We simply see if we can find Carbon-14 in so -alled ancient fossils as in the dinosaur bones mentioned above. Carbon-14 was found in numerous different coal layers with evolution dates of millions of years. It was also found in supposedly million-year-old whale bones, shells, and even “billion year old” diamonds in several locations. The Carbon-14 dates range in thousands, never millions, of years and have certainly become a Young Earth Creationist’s true friend.

Tom DeRosa is the Executive Director and Founder of Creation Studies Institute, He is an author, teacher, and sought out speaker with a passion to equip other believers with the tools needed to refute the lies of evolution. Tom can be reached at [email protected].