Young Earth Creationism

Michelangelo's painting of the creation of the Sun and Moon.

Young Earth Creationism, sometimes abbreviated YEC,^[1] is a form of creationism which holds that the earth and the universe are approximately 6,000 years old.^[2][3]

Young earth creationists hold that both creation and evolution are at root tied to worldviews, and because they are both claims about historical (or prehistorical) events, they depend on untestable assumptions. At the same time, young earth creation scientists argue that the young universe view is the explanation that best fits the evidence.

Most other scientists regard young earth creationism as being unscientific. Many do so because they believe that things such as radiometric dating and biological observations have disproved it, or for ideological reasons.

Biblical

Young Earth creationism generally takes the following positions regarding the biblical book of Genesis:

• Creation took place over a period of six ordinary (solar/24-hour) days, with God then "resting" on the seventh day.
• This creation, described in Genesis as "good" and "very good", was without flaw or defect.
• All people are descended from the first couple, Adam and Eve.
• Adam and Eve sinned, leading to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden.
• A global Noachian flood occurred, destroying all land-based, air-breathing life, except that on the Ark.
• The dispersal of humanity was caused by God after the Tower of Babel. ^[4][5][6]

Scientific

Young earth creationism holds that the scientific evidence is unreasonably interpreted by evolutionists and atheists/naturalists as supporting their point of view, but that the same evidence can be reasonably interpreted by creationists to support the creationary point of view

They further argue that the scientific evidence is more consistent with the creationary point of view than the evolutionary point of view.

Some specific arguments are as follows:

• The first law of thermodynamics and second law of thermodynamics argue against an eternal universe, and these laws point to the universe being created by God.^[7][8][9]
• The theory of evolution is at odds with scientific evidence. They often cite secular scientific sources which agree with them on various points (for further details please see: theory of evolution and creationism).^[10]
• Both evolutionary scientists and young earth creation scientists believe that speciation occurs, however, young earth creation scientists state that speciation generally occurs at a much faster rate than evolutionary scientists believe is the case.^[11]
• Many young earth creationists such as the young earth creationist at Creation Ministries International and CreationWiki assert that the Bible contains knowledge that shows an understanding of scientific knowledge beyond that believed to exist at the time the Bible was composed.^[12][13]

Young earth creationism holds that the book of Genesis is historical in nature and that Bible exegesis warrants a six-day creation with each day being 24 hours.^[14][15][16] Andrew Kulikovsky describes it as follows:

The hermeneutic employed by most YECs is best described as the historical-grammatical method in which historical narrative (such as the book of Genesis) is interpreted as literal history, prophecy is interpreted as prophecy, poetry is interpreted as poetry, etc. ^[17]

Historical-grammatical exegesis involves a systematic approach to analyzing in detail the historical situation, events and circumstances surrounding the text, and the semantics and syntactical relationships of the words which comprise the text.^[18]

Young earth creation scientists advance a number of reasons for the earth and universe being approximately 6,000 years old,^[19][20][21] and raise a number of objections to claims of an extremely old age for the earth and the universe.^[22][20][23] In regards to the field of geology these scientists believe that the evolutionary geological timescale is in error.^[24][25][26] Young earth creationist scientists also believe that there are multiple lines of evidence from the field of geology showing that the earth is young.^{[27][28][29][30]} Young earth creationist scientists use a geological system that more heavily relies on catastrophism and reject the uniformitarian assumptions behind the older dates derived by secular geologists, and thus reject these dates. ^[31] In addition, young earth creationist scientists point out that catastrophism is increasing being accepted in the field of geology. ^[32][33]

The majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1995.

The young earth creationism view is that the various astronomical bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies were supernaturally created and that materialistic explanations of the the origins of various astronomical bodies are insufficient and counter evidence.^[34] In addition, creationists often cite the secular scientific literature in order to make the case that materialist explanations of various astronomical bodies are inadequate:

In 2001, Cristina Chiappini wrote regarding the Milky Way galaxy the following:

". . . it is an elegant structure that shows both order and complexity. . . . The end product is especially remarkable in the light of what is believed to be the starting point: nebulous blobs of gas. How the universe made the Milky Way from such simple beginnings is not altogether clear. - Cristina Chiappini, "The Formation and Evolution of the Milky Way," American Scientist (vol. 89, Nov./Dec. 2001), p. 506. ^[39]

Dr. Walt Brown provides numerous citations to the secular science literature that corroborate the failings of current old universe paradigm explanations in regards to the planets, stars, and galaxies.^[40][41][42]

The Institute for Creation Research has a notable essay by David Coppedge entitled "Mature at Birth: Universe Discredits Evolution" which cites recent findings which challenge an old universe paradigm.^[43] In addition, Henry Morris has an essay regarding the subject of the failings of the old universe paradigm entitled "What Astronomers Don't Know". ^[44]

Young earth creationist scientists also contest the Big Bang theory stating that it is scientifically unsound. ^{[45] [46] [47] [48] [49]}

Starlight and the Age of the Universe

For a more detailed treatment, see Starlight problem.

Barry Setterfield

Anti-creationists often claim that starlight from millions of light years away demonstrates that the Biblical timescale of 6,000 years is in error, as insufficient time has passed for the light from distant stars to reach Earth. Creationists respond in part by pointing out that the popular Big Bang theory has its own star light-travel time problem (the horizon problem), citing the work of Dr. Charles W. Misner. ^[50]

Secondly, creationists have proposed a number of explanations for the objection, and although none are yet certain, they claim that it shows that the critics' claims that it cannot be explained is unfounded.

Setterfield's decay of the speed of light

One early explanation was that of creationist Barry Setterfield, who proposed that the speed of light was faster in the past.^[51]. Critics objected to Setterfield's proposal, including on the grounds that the constancy of the speed of light is one of science's most fundamental laws.^[52] Yet in 1999, John Webb, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, and his colleagues reported astronomical observations suggesting that the value of the fine-structure constant (which is related to the speed of light) may have changed (although the size of the change was much smaller than proposed by Setterfield). They subsequently published this in 2001 in Physical Review Letters.^[53][52] However, other problems with the proposal has led most creationists to abandon the idea.^[54]

Russell Humphreys' model

Creationary physicist Dr. Russell Humphreys proposed a model based on Einstein's law of relativity (as the Big Bang model is), but with a different starting assumption, a bounded universe. Humphreys' model proposes that God created the universe much smaller than it is now, then expanded it, quoting the Bible saying that God "stretched out the heavens". In such a scenario, time would pass at different rates on Earth and in outer parts of the universe, so that while 6,000 years went by on Earth, billions of years passed on the outer edge of the universe. This model is also based on the Genesis account recording the days of creation according to time on Earth, rather than elsewhere.

John Hartnett's model

Young earth creationist scientist Dr. John Hartnett proposes a model similar to Humphreys, wherein the Earth was trapped in a time-dilation field caused by extremely strong gravitation during the first few days of creation, from Earth's point of view, while billions of years passed for the rest of the universe. He attributes the field, it's removal and the continued balance in our solar system (after the field was removed) to divine intervention. ^[55] Whilst Humphreys' model has time dilation caused only by gravity (per Einstein's General Theory of Relativity), Hartnett's model also takes into account time dilation caused by motion (God's expansion of the universe) (per Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity).

According to young-Earth creationists, God separately created each kind of living thing, or baramin, to reproduce "after its kind". Living things had built into them a capacity for variation and adaptation, but within the limits of their kind. Genetically, in the case of sexually-reproducing species, much this is due to the information carried on each living thing's DNA being a subset of the parent's DNA, with the subset of information being selected for by the process known as natural selection (described by a creationist before Darwin wrote about it). Mutations also play a part in this variation, but only to the extent of destroying genetic information, not creating it.

Many of the ensuing variations have been classified by science as different species, but this speciation is not evolution, as it does not involve the generation of new genetic information and therefore could not have produced the evolutionary "family tree".

YECs believe that most of the world's living things were wiped out by the Great Flood, but that pairs of each kind that could not survive in a flood (i.e. air-breathing, land-dwelling creatures) survived the flood on Noah's Ark, and from the Flood survivors all modern species have descended.

YECs believe that most rocks were laid down in two main episodes. The first was in creation week, particularly when God caused the waters of the Earth to gather together into the sea and dry land to appear. The second was during Noah's Flood. The effects of a global watery catastrophe would have been enormous, with massive amounts of erosion and sedimentation. Further, many young-Earth creationists believe that there was a single supercontinent prior to the Flood, which broke up during the Flood. This would have further contributed to a massive reshaping of the Earth's surface.

For a more detailed treatment, see Biblical anthropology.

YECs believe that all intact evidence of civilisation is evidence of post-flood civilisation, as the Flood destroyed the pre-flood world. God confounded man's single language at the Tower of Babel, forcing different family groups to separate and spread around the world. Most of the people groups listed in the 'Table of Nations' in Genesis 10 , which contains a family tree of Noah's descendants, are identifiable from non-biblical records. People enduring a forced migration will find any shelter they can, and this would explain much of the evidence of "cavemen".

The young earth creationism view contrasts with evolution and other aspects of the old universe view in the following ways:

• According to the chronogenealogies in the Bible, the age of the universe and Earth is approximately 6,000 years. The old universe view is that the universe started about 14,000 million years ago, and Earth was formed around 4,500 million years ago.
• The creation account has everything being created over a period of six ordinary days, whereas the old universe view has things appearing over billions of years.
• The order of creation is different. The creation account has the Earth before the sun, plants before the sun, and birds before land animals, among other differences. The old universe view is the opposite order for each of these.
• The creation account records that death didn't exist prior to the Fall, whereas the evolutionary view is that death and suffering are part of the biological process and existed for billions of years of death prior to the appearance of man.
• The creation account records various living things being separately created, whereas the evolutionary view has all living things being descended from the first living cell.

Young Earth creationist responses to criticisms from atheistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, progressive creationists, and others include the following:

• The young Earth view is just one interpretation of the Bible.

The young Earth view is the clear intention of the authors of the Bible. See Creation week for more. Also, the young Earth view was the view of most of the church throughout most of its history. That has only changed in order to accommodate non-biblical views of history.

• Creationists read the Bible literally, whereas parts, such as the creation account, are really metaphor.

Creationists reject that they read all the Bible literally, and accept that there is metaphor an other non-literal passages in the Bible. Instead, they read the Bible the way it was meant to be understood, which in the case of the creation account, is as literal history. See Biblical exegesis above and Creation week for more.

• Evolution has scientific evidence, and creationism does not.

Both creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence. The difference is in how that evidence is interpreted.

• Creation relies on faith, not evidence.

Both creation and evolution are faith positions based on different worldviews. Evolutionists exclude God from consideration a priori, not because of the evidence.

• If creation had scientific merit, why don't they publish their evidence in peer-reviewed scientific papers?

The scientific establishment won't allow creationists to publish. See Suppression of alternatives to evolution.

• Creationists start with a preconception and try and fit the evidence to that. Evolutionists start with the evidence.

Both creationists and evolutionists have their worldview as a starting point. Evolutionists try and fit the evidence into their idea just as much as they accuse the creationists of doing.

• Because they are based on the Bible, creationists are not willing to change their views. Evolutionists will change their views as new evidence is found.

Creationists start with the Bible as the foundation of their views, but beyond that are willing to change their views as new evidence is found. Evolutionists are willing to change the details of how evolution works, but are not prepared to change their basic view that evolution did occur.

• Creationists are anti-science.

Many creationists are scientists and fully support science. They never reject science itself, and the criticism is bogus.

The arrows point to paraconformities at the Grand Canyon.

CreationWiki's article Young earth evidence stated,

"Many arguments have been put forth that draw upon scientific evidence to support the a belief in a recent creation or young earth. Some arguments simply put an upper limit on the age of the Earth, solar system, or universe, which are inconsistent with an ancient creation. For example, Russell Humphreys' argument based on the amount of salt in the ocean is designed to show the maximum possible age of the oceans based on uniformitarian assumptions, and thus shows that the oceans could not be as old as claimed; it is not designed to show the actual age of the oceans, and as such the resulting age, although far too great for the young Earth view, is not inconsistent with it."^[56]

The following is a list of various scientific reasons:

1. "The old-earth idea was developed historically, not from letting the physical facts speak for themselves but by imposing anti-biblical philosophical assumptions onto the geological observations. See the following article..."^[57]
2. William R. Corliss is a respected cataloger of scientific anomalies and the science magazine New Scientist had an article which focused on Mr. Corliss's career as a cataloger of scientific anomalies.^[58] Mr. Corliss has cataloged scores of anomalies which challenge the old earth geology paradigm.^[59]
3. "The radiometric dating methods are based on those same naturalistic, uniformitarian, anti-biblical assumptions and there is plenty of published evidence that they do not give valid dates. Besides the RATE research mentioned earlier, consider the well-researched arguments in The Mythology of Modern Dating Methods."^[57]
4. "The almost complete absence of evidence of erosion or soil layers or the activity of living things (plant roots, burrow marks, etc.) at the upper surface of the various strata (showing that the stratum did not lay there for thousands or millions of years before the next layer was deposited)."^[57]
5. "Polystrate fossils (usually trees) that cut through more than one layer of rock (even different kinds of rock supposedly deposited over thousands if not millions of years). The trees would have rotted and left no fossil evidence if the deposition rate was that slow."^[57]
6. "Soft-sediment deformation—that thousands of feet of sedimentary rocks (of various layers) are bent (like a stack of thin pancakes over the edge of a plate), as we see at the mile-deep Kaibab Upwarp in the Grand Canyon. Clearly the whole, mile-deep deposit of various kinds of sediment was still relatively soft and probably wet (not like it is today) when the earthquake occurred that uplifted one part of the series of strata."^[57]
7. "Many fossils that show (require) very rapid burial and fossilization. For example, soft parts (jellyfish, animal feces, scales and fins of fish) or whole, large, fully-articulated skeletons (e.g., whales or large dinosaurs such as T-Rex) are preserved. Or we find many creatures’ bodies contorted. All this evidence shows that these creatures were buried rapidly (in many cases even buried alive) and fossilized before scavengers, micro-decay organisms and erosional processes could erase the evidence. These are found all over the world and all through the various strata."^[57]
8. "...distant starlight is no more of a problem for young-earth creationists than it is for big bang proponents..."^[57]
9. "Paraconformities challenge the old earth uniformitarian geology paradigm."^[60]
10. Geomagnetic field decay

    "Observations made of the strength of Earth's magnetic field over the last 150 years show that it is decaying, which puts an upper limit on the age of the Earth. If the decay is projected back 20,000 years, the heat produced by the electric current that generates the Earth's magnetic field would have liquefied the Earth. Naturally this would make life impossible. The best model for the Earth's magnetic field and observed data places the age of Earth at 6,000 – 8,700 years."^[56]

    "The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field ("dipole" and "non-dipole") is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15"^[61]

    "Presence of magnetic fields around solar system bodies (Mercury, Jupiter's moon Ganymede, Neptune, Uranus) without an obvious internal dynamo. No natural process is known which could sustain a magnetic field around these bodies - their magnetic fields should have decayed out of existence if they ever had any."^[62]

11. Pleochroic halos

    "Radioactive inclusions in rock often cause concentric spheres of discoloration due to the damage caused by alpha particles as they are emitted by the radioactive substance. Pleochroic halos are the scars of radioactive decay, particularly alpha decay. These scars appear as spheres (rings when views in cross-section) in the rock surrounding a decaying radioactive atom. The size of the halo is a signature of the energy of the emission and therefore the element and isotope involved. Creationists use these halos in several ways to suggest problems with the standard uniformitarian model."^[56]

12. Helium diffusion

    "One type of nuclear decay is the emission of Helium nuclei known as an alpha emission. Elements like uranium and thorium produce helium in zircons as a by-product of their radioactivity. This helium seeps out of (sic) zircons quickly over a wide range of temperatures. If the zircons really are about 1.5 billion years old (the age which conventional dating gives assuming a constant decay rate), almost all of the helium should have dissipated from the zircons long ago. But there is a significant amount of helium still inside the zircons, showing their ages to be 6000 +/- 2000 years. Accelerated decay must have produced a billion years worth of helium in that short amount of time."^[56]

    "Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously."^[61]

13. Helioseismology

    "The core of the sun produces deuterium from hydrogen fusion at 5 million degrees K. The heat is transferred from the core by convection currents so it could reach surface in days, not a million years. It also leads to an age for the sun based on the deuterium/hydrogen ratio of the local interstellar medium of 6,000-12,857 years."^[56]

14. Accelerated Nuclear Decay

    "The main assumption of radiometric dating is that the decay rates are constant with time. If the decay rate has varied significantly over time then any date based on radioactive decay is worthless. However, if radioactive decay has been happening for Billions of years then there is insufficient argon diffusion, insufficient lead diffusion, insufficient helium in the air, and too much Helium in Rocks. Recent experiments commissioned by the RATE group indicate that "1.5 billion years" worth of nuclear decay has taken place, but in one or more short periods 4000 - 8000 years ago. This would shrink the alleged 4.5 billion year radioisotope age of the earth to only a few thousand years."^[56]

    "Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 "Orphan" Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals."^[61]

15. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.

    "The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. 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.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies."^[61]

16. Comets.

    "According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4"^[61]

    "The origin of the comets in our solar system is a great mystery from an old universe perspective as they degrade rapidly. While evolutionary astronomers once thought the Oort cloud could account for all comets, the Kuiper belt has been revived to explain their existence."^[62]

17. Not enough mud on the sea floor.

    "Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago."^[61] (some emphasis added, but not all)

    "Present erosion rate could produce all the existing ocean sediment in only 15 million years."^[62][63]

18. Not enough sodium in the sea.

    "Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean."^[61]

19. Many strata are too tightly bent.

    "In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition."^[61]

20. Biological material decays too fast.

    "Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older... Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage. Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts."^[61]

21. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

    "With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it... These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old."^[61]

22. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.

    "Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas."^[61]

23. Agriculture is too recent.

    "The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all."^[61]

24. History is too short.

    "According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The Biblical time scale is much more likely."^[61]

25. "Existence of unstable rings around planets like Saturn. Rings are not stable and will not last."^[62][64]
26. Recession of the moon from the earth

    "The moon is moving away from the earth gradually due to tidal activity. This movement is too fast for the earth-moon system to be 4.6 billion years old."^[62][65]

27. Shrinking sun

    "Sun may be shrinking a few feet each year. Can't extrapolate this trend back to the past very far without effecting earth's environment."^[62][66]

28. Absence/shortage of solar neutrinos

    "Nuclear fusion in the sun's core should give off neutrinos. Experiments have not detected an adequate number of neutrinos - this is a well known problem. Some creationists have argued that this implies solar heat is due to gravity and not fusion - this would imply a young sun."^[62][67]

29. Polonium Halos

    "Robert Gentry's work showed that the Earth's granite was never in a molten condition, because polonium halos survive only in solid rock and the half-life of polonium is much too short to survive a multimillion-year cooling time. His results seem to indicate that the Earth was created instantaneously, in a cool condition. If true, it is clear evidence for creation and a young earth."^[62]

30. Human population growth

    "If humans had been around more than a few thousand years, they would have populated the earth more quickly."^[62][68]

31. Rapid Oil Formation

    "It has been claimed that oil was formed over 100 millions of years from organic remains, but recent experiments have shown that oil can be produced under the right conditions in a matter of minutes."^[62]

    "Experiments by the U.S. Bureau of mines showed that petroleum (oil) can be produced from organic material in only 20 minutes."^[62][69]

    "British scientists claimed to have invented a way to turn household garbage into oil suitable for home heating or power plant use. 'We are doing in 10 minutes what it has taken nature 150 million years to do', said Noel McAuliffe of Manchester University..."^[62][70]

    "Bottom line - Economic accumulations of oil and gas can be generated in thousands of years in sedimentary basins that have experienced hot fluid flow for similar durations."^[62][71]

32. Rapid Wood Petrification

    "Petrified wood was believed to required thousands or even millions of years, but a US patent now exists that is able to produce petrified wood rapidly."^[62]

    "A mineralized sodium silicate solution for the application to wood has a composition causing it to penetrate the wood and jell within the wood so as to give the wood the non-burning characteristics of petrified wood."^[62][72]

33. Tree rings

    "Tree rings, including rings on petrified forest trees, can't be traced back more than some thousands of years."^[62][73]

34. Only recently known civilizations

    "Earliest known civilizations are only a few thousand years old."^[62][74]

35. Niagara falls

    "Erosion of the system indicates it is only a few thousand years old."^[62][75]

36. Mississippi river delta

    "Erosion rate and amount of sediment accumulated indicate that it is only a few thousand years old."^[62][76]

37. Lack of equilibrium of Carbon-14/Carbon-12 ratio

    "This ratio should reach equilibrium in the atmosphere in only some thousands of years, but it hasn't reached that point yet."^[62][77]

38. Erosion rate of the continents

    "Continental mass divided by erosion rate would wash all the continents into the ocean in about 14 million years."^[62][78]

Young Earth Creationism is a subset of Creationism most commonly found among members of the Abrahamic religions, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (for details please see: Creationism). In regards to early Judaism and early Christianity, early Judaism supported young earth creationism and a majority of the early church fathers held the young earth creationist view.^[79]

Organizations

Some of the more notable young earth creationist organizations include: Answers in Genesis (America and the United Kingdom), Creation Ministries International (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, U.S.A., and United Kingdom), Institute for Creation Research (U.S.A.), Creation Research Society (U.S.A.), and NorthWest Creation Network (Washington state, U.S.A.) which founded CreationWiki.

Magazines and newsletters

The Institute for Creation Research publishes a free monthly magazine, Acts & Facts, which includes news of the organization and articles.

Creation Ministries International publishes a 56-page colour magazine, Creation, with no paid advertising, which is distributed to 140 countries.^[80]

Answers in Genesis, which previously distributed Creation, began their own magazine, Answers, in 2006. It contains advertising and its target audience is primarily American.^[81]

Peer-reviewed journals

The Creation Research Society Quarterly is published quarterly by the Creation Research Society,^[82] and the Journal of Creation is published three times a year by Creation Ministries International.^[83]

• Duane Gish, Evolution: The Fossils Still Say No!, El Cajon: Institute for Creation Research, 1996 ^[84]
• Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Evolution, Master Books, 1999 (Free on-line version)
• Jonathan Sarfati, Refuting Evolution 2, Master Books, 2002, ISBN 0890513872 (Free on-line version)
• R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy.^[85][86]
• Phillip Johnson, Darwin on Trial. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois. 1991 ^[87]
• R. C. Sproul, Not a Chance: The Myth of Chance in Modern Science and Cosmology, Baker Book House: 1994 ^[88][89]
• Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 7th Edition, 2001 (free online version)

Young earth creationism websites:

• Answers in Genesis
• Creation Ministries International
• Institute for Creation Research
• TrueOrigins.org
• Center for Scientific Creation
• AllAboutCreation.org

Articles focusing on arguments for a young earth:

• What are the most compelling evidences of a young earth - AiG
• Evidence Supporting a Recent Creation - Northwest Creation Network
• Evidence for a Young World - Institute for Creation Research

• Creation Science
• Christianity and Science
• History of Young Earth Creationism
• List of Young Earth Creationists
• Earth Age Opinions of Prominent Christians - Pre-1800

Alternative views

• Old Earth Creationism
• Theistic evolution
• Theory of Evolution
• Gap theory
• Day age creationism
• Progressive Creationism