Welcome back to the Confessions of a Young Earth Creationist (YEC). We’ve looked into the Bible and then into the stars, and now we’re going to take a look at the ground beneath our own feet. When trying to prove that the earth is very, very old, many people will point into the dirt and call upon the science of Geology to prove Deep Time. In the coming weeks, I shall call upon the science of Geology to prove that the Earth is in fact much younger than she looks. Maybe she was created 6,000 years ago by God? Maybe it’s Maybelline…

Before I get into the actual science, let’s take a look at the arguments made FOR deep time based on Geology.
1. The geological column. When you dig down into the earth, you find that the continents are made of lots of layers, one on top of the next, like a big old cake but much harder to eat. We are told that those layers each take THOUSANDS of years to form, and since there are THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of layers, we conclude that the continents are MUCH older than 6,000 measly years. You will find this column in text books showing the various fossils we expect each layer to contain. On the bottom are the marine life which teemed in the early oceans of earths distant past.

Hey! You fish stop your INCESSANT TEEMING!

Seriously, what is with sea life? Why is it always TEEMING? Can’t it just swim around once in a while? Why does it have to constantly TEEM?!?!? ENOUGH WITH THE TEEMING ALREADY!

2. The fossil record. Those fossils we find in the column are used to show a slow, gradual progression from simple life forms to more and more complex ones, through MANY rock layers, until we get to the most recent and recognizable life forms. Again, we are told fossils take a very long time to form, so they prove the deepness of time. Also, because some things exist in the fossils which no longer walk (Or teem) on earth today, they must have gone extinct LONG ago, like the dinosaurs, and thus earth and its history is deep. Real deep, man. Far out.

3. Radio Dating methods. Some big atoms are unstable and will decay at predictable rates. Thus, by measuring the amount of parent (Original, unstable) element is in a rock and how much daughter element (the stuff it becomes when it breaks down) we can discover how long ago the rock formed. Using these methods, we can date rocks at being millions or billions of years old, which, if I am doing the math right, means they are older than 6,000 years old. But I’m no Calculus teacher.

All of these bits of evidence are based on a philosophy which is called “Uniformitarianism.” It basically just means that, whatever is happening now has always been happening, and thus, “The Present is the Key to the Past.” We assume that, if we want to know what happened in the past, we just look around at what is happening now. People like Bill Nye will reference this by claiming YEC’s demand different laws of physics, as if a flood is somehow a magic event which we’ve never seen in recent times. However, if you take a quick look at almost anywhere in the Pacific, you’ll find that sometimes things happen all of a sudden which are not regular events, like earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and World War II. Uniformitatianism basically pretends that those sort of things either don’t happen, or don’t have any significant, lasting effects.

I’ll be going into all of this in detail for a couple of weeks, but what you need to realize going in is this: Without the assumption of deep time and uniformatarianism, the above evidences for deep time aren’t evidences for deep time. Once you take away the assumptions and just look at the data we can observe, things begin to look a lot different. Science is funny that way.

I’ll start you off with a video of a Geologist with a pro-wrestling name just to get you started. Join us next time for more down to earth fun! And as always, remember: #JesusLovesYou