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Uniformitarianism
Index
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Uniformitarianism
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By Les Sherlock, posted April 2021 but originally posted c2018
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INDEX
Introduction
The Moon
Volcanoes
World-wide Flood
The Rate Project
Conclusion
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Introduction
Introduction
"Four-and-a-half billion years ago, when Earth had barely cooled off from its initial formation, a world the size of Mars collided with Earth and sent debris mostly from the mantle into space. This formed the moon. For the next few hundred million years after that other large bodies kept smacking into Earth."
New Scientist, 9 December 2017, page nine.
"Scientists tend to huddle around one of two hypotheses that may explain the Cretaceous extinction: an extraterrestrial impact, such as an asteroid or comet, or a massive bout of volcanism."
National Geographic.com
One of the essential foundation stones of evolution is uniformitarianism: the notion that everything we see in geology is the result of change taking place at the same speed as today. It absolutely denies that any catastrophic event could have happened in the past that would change the landscape of the planet in any significant way to produce everything we can now see. The BioLogos website defines it as:
“the theory that natural and geological phenomena are for the most part the results of forces that have operated continuously, with uniformity, and without interruption, over billions and billions of years,” and that the “forces at work in nature are essentially fixed and constant.”
While they also point out they do accept catastrophes taking place, the assumption presumably is that where these have had any impact on geology there have been millions or billions of years in between such episodes.
The reason for this is fairly obvious: evolution requires millions, billions even, of years in order for all of life forms to develop from a ‘simple’ cell that miraculously and spontaneously appeared from inanimate matter. Therefore, the fossils of life forms that are supposed to be part-way along the chain of evolution must be buried in rock formations that are millions or billions of years old. To accept that these rock formations could have appeared quickly as a result of world-wide catastrophic events therefore significantly undermines the theory.
On the other hand, in order to explain the existence of the moon, ‘New Scientist’ claims a massive strike on the earth by a body the size of Mars. To explain the extinction of dinosaurs National Geographic claim massive asteroid impacts and/or a large number of enormous volcanoes. Did these things happen without having any impact on the geology of the earth? Is it feasible that there could only have been these two impacts on the earth from outer space and no others? Of course not! So the basic principle of uniformitarianism is totally falsified by their own explanation of scientific observations.
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The Moon
The Moon
Observation over the past 40 years shows that the moon is gradually moving away from the earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches (3.8 cm) per year. See Inching Away from an Old Earth. At this speed, just 1.5 billion years ago it would have been touching the earth! If, as evolutionists claim, it was formed as a result of a Mars-sized body smashing into the earth, then it would have left the earth far faster than its present perceived rate of recession, which significantly reduces the time it would take to reach its present position; and this is assuming it is possible that the earth’s gravity could slow its speed down to its present rate during the moon’s journey to where we see it today. See here for more detail on the moon, its uniqueness and evolutionary ideas about its origin.
Therefore, the idea of it forming 4.5 billion years ago is completely contrary to scientific observation. Yet evolutionists are forced to make it so long ago in order to allow evolution to be taking place when they need. The claim of 4.5 billion years is based not on what we can see, but on the belief that a Creator-God does not exist - in other words it is based on faith, not science.
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Volcanoes
Volcanoes
It is very obvious that a large number of volcanoes simultaneously appearing all over the earth would have a massive effect on its geology; but why would volcanoes suddenly erupt in this way? According to the National Geographic link (above) these took place about the same time as the impact that created the moon; so presumably they would say this was the cause. However, what they do not mention is the effect on carbon dating (see later) of all the (quote)
“sunlight-blocking dust and soot” that would have resulted."
So bearing in mind the acceptance of a huge number of volcanoes and meteor strikes on the earth in the past, and the fact that evolutionists can only speculate on past events based on their presuppositions, let us consider an eye-witness account of what actually happened.
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Worldwide flood
World-wide Flood
God has told us what took place, with the world-wide flood that resulted from the entire population rebelling against Him - with the exception of Noah and his family, of course. Evolutionists are obliged to deny this event ever took place because if it did, then the sedimentary rock layers around the earth containing a vast number of fossils are its result. This means that Christians who have compromised with evolution (like BioLogos, for example) are obliged to deny the truth of the Bible where it reports on this event. That denial does not simply contradict Genesis chapters six to nine, but also Jesus in Matthew 24:38–39 and Luke 17:26–27; Peter in 1 Peter 3:20 and 2 Peter 2:5; and the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:7. One compromise in the Old Testament cascades into further compromise in the New Testament and undermines its authority as God’s word.
For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
Matthew 24:38-39
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Luke 17:26–27
who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.
1 Peter 3:20
and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;
2 Peter 2:5
By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
Hebrews 11:7
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RATE Project
The RATE Project
RATE stands for Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth, and was conducted by eight scientists between 1997 and 2005. They were:
Larry Vardiman, Ph.D. Atmospheric Science (project co-ordinator)
D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. Physics (helium diffusion)
Eugene F. Chaffin, Ph.D. Physics (theoretical models)
Donald DeYoung, Ph.D. Physics
John R. Baumgardner, Ph.D. Geophysics (radiocarbon)
Steven A. Austin, Ph.D. Geology (rock dating)
Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D. Geology (rock dating, fission tracks, radiohalos)
Steven W. Boyd, Ph.D. Hebraic and Cognate Studies
Contrary to most scientific studies undertaken by people believing the Bible cannot be trusted and based on the premise that evolution is fact, this project was in order to examine the scientific processes we can observe and determine how they would apply to the description given in the Bible. Predictably, if you check out evolutionary websites which refer to this, you will find they pooh pooh the findings: but then they are bound to do that aren’t they? Because anything that contradicts the basis of the atheistic notion that the universe could create itself cannot be tolerated. However, I find the explanation the RATE project scientists give is extremely compelling, particularly as it is a far better explanation of the results of the catastrophes I mentioned at the start of this page.
While we cannot be absolutely certain of the physical cause of Noah’s flood, the bombardment of asteroids on the earth, as explained by the RATE group, seems to be very high on the list of possibilities. Since there is evidence on the earth of at least 110 impact craters, those that crashed into the sea would have the following effects, but for a more detailed description, see here
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Giant tsunamis would swamp the land area of the world
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Vast quantities of water would jet up into the lower atmosphere, to fall back on the land as rain
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The earth’s crust would be broken up into the tectonic plates we see today
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Vast amounts of molten magma would flow up into the sea through the fractured sea bed, turning millions or billions of gallons of sea water into steam, which would rise up into the lower atmosphere and then fall back to earth as rain
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A run-away process of subduction (see next paragraph) would be initiated, causing a rapid movement of the tectonic plates and dividing the single land mass into the separated islands we see today
“…as the ocean floor (in the areas of the ocean trenches) sinks into the mantle, it drags the rest of the ocean floor with it, in a conveyor-belt-like fashion. The sinking slabs of cold ocean floor produce stress in the surrounding hot mantle rock. These stresses, in turn, cause the rock to become hotter and more deformable, allowing ocean slabs to sink even faster. The ultimate result is a runaway process that causes the entire pre-Flood ocean floor to sink to the bottom of the mantle in a matter of a few weeks. As the slabs sink (at rates of feet-per-second) down to the mantle/core boundary, enormous amounts of energy are released.”
(Quote from here)
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Only a rapid movement of the tectonic plates could generate enough energy to uplift the huge mountains of the earth to their present height - today’s slow movement simply would not have the power to do this
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The huge asteroid impacts on the earth’s surface (any one of which would have had the force of 100,000 hydrogen bombs) would explain the sudden switches of the earth’s magnetic polarity seen in the cooled magma on the sea bed
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The cataclysmic impacts would trigger giant super-volcanoes and earthquakes over the following decades, which in turn would send vast amounts of smoke, ash, soot, etc. into the atmosphere, massively reducing the sun’s rays
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The hot magma pouring into the ocean would heat it up, while at the same time the reduced sun’s rays on the land would cool that down: the result of warm sea against cold land is snow - and lots of it! This would produce the ice age, lasting several hundred years. It has been calculated that 2,300 feet of ice could accumulate in 500 years by this process
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Carbon dating is based on the assumption that the ratio between carbon^14 and carbon^12 in the atmosphere has always been the same. See here for a detailed description. Carbon^14 is created in the atmosphere by the sun’s rays, which as we have seen would have been radically reduced. Since all living things contain the same amount of carbon^14 as the atmosphere, through eating vegetation that absorbs it or through eating things that eat vegetation, the time of death is calculated by the ratio between unstable carbon^14 and stable carbon^12, which changes since the carbon^14 is no longer being ‘topped up’. The result will be an artificially high age if the levels at the time of their death were significantly different to those today
Dr. Willard Libby, the founder of the carbon^14 dating method, calculated it would take up to 30,000 years for the ratio between carbon^14 and carbon^12 in the atmosphere to reach equilibrium. It is known that it has not yet reached equilibrium, proving that the earth cannot be older than 30,000 years! See the link immediately above for more details.
Confirmation of the validity of the above observations can be seen from the Mount St Helen’s eruption in May 1980, which gave a comparatively small-scale demonstration of the effects of a world-wide flood. In the space of a few days, weeks and months it produced geological formations with significant similarity to those we can see on a world-wide scale. Never before has there been such overwhelming evidence for the validity of the Bible record, with confirmation by modern scientific techniques alongside this event, which totally falsifies the claims of uniformitarianism. See here or here for a full description of the effect of the St Helens eruption and here for more detail on different aspects of its results.
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Conclusion
Conclusion
Uniformitarianism is a theory wanting to have things both ways. When nothing else works it resorts to massive, sudden catastrophe. At the same time, in order to maintain the billions of years required for evolutionary theory, it insists there has never, ever been any kind of catastrophe that could have had any significant effect on the relevant factors.
The early scientific pioneers, on whose work modern science is built, believed that everything exists because of the activity of a Creator who would have founded the universe and everything in it with consistent laws that would therefore be discoverable by careful research. See this list of scientists, past and present, who accept the reality of our Creator-God.
More and more scientific observations have validated their belief. Far better to follow their lead, accept that there are no observable laws of physics that are capable of creating time, space, galaxies, planets and life forms on the earth; and turn to the Bible as the only book in existence dating back 1000’s of years that has no conflict with observable science. Of course, there is considerable conflict with the notions of those scientists who want a universe that can create itself and therefore interpret scientific data accordingly, as can be seen from their uniformitarian assumptions; but that is only to be expected!
That book reveals who the Creator is, how and why He created everything, and the way to fulfil the purpose for which He created us. See here for more details.
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