GOD, COSMIC EVOLUTION, & RADIOMETRIC AGES
Opening prayer and Welcome — Pastor
Speaker Introduction #3
Pastor
Dr. McMullen’s talk today is “God, Cosmic Evolution, and Radiometric Ages.” The clear nights of the Mojave Desert at Edwards Air Force Base prompted him to take up astronomy as a hobby. At Indiana University, his studies included the history of astronomy. He has an 11.5-inch Dobsonian telescope but says the viewing is not good in Statesboro. He should go out into the surrounding fields and farmland and do his stargazing there. In 2017, he gave his class the day off and drove to South Carolina to observe the total eclipse as it crossed the United States from South Carolina to Oregon.
As an undergraduate at Washington State University, his classes included physics, chemistry, and nuclear engineering. Later, he worked at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California. There he was involved in testing nuclear devices at the Nevada Test Site, which is north of Las Vegas and next to Area 51. Later, after this assignment, he was Deputy Director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory at the then Aerospace Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
Figure 30. Aerospace Research Laboratories Farewell Gift. An aerial picture of the then Aerospace Research Laboratories with signatories. One signature is that of Hans von Ohain, the inventor of the German jet engine. The author broadened his science background, especially in basic research, on this
God Created Everything Diverse, Mature, and Complex
The main point of this chapter is the beginning, 1:1, KJV). The God of the Bible, Who created everything, and the resurrection of Christ are the Christian’s foundational beliefs. As we are seeing, all of the Pop Sci stories of science concerning our origins are based on beliefs, asserted assumptions, imaginations, speculations, and presuppositions, none of which tells us about God.
On the other hand, nature tells us there is a God, and the Bible tells us about God. For instance, the psalmist declares from everlasting to everlasting, You are 90:2 This eternal God created us, our genetic information, and the physical laws that govern us. The Bible declares that God created the sun, moon, and stars.
God called into being plants, fishes, birds, and animals. They were diverse, mature, and complex, and also capable of reproduction. An example is the General Sherman tree in Sequoia National Park, California, which is the largest tree in the world by volume. The General Sherman tree grew from a small seed. That seed came from another sequoia tree, which came from a seed that eventually came from the original mature tree that appeared according to God’s command at the So, which came first, the tree or the seed? Obviously, it was the tree.
Besides creating plants complex, mature, and diverse in the beginning, God created animals diverse, mature, and complex in the beginning. So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Obviously, it was the chicken. However, the Pop Sci stories on origins are just the opposite of God’s original creation. They do not start with the chicken. They usually have some kind of cosmic egg, chemical happening, or biological seed that will produce everything: Energy, elements, or a kind of spark of life. But to have everything come from some simple beginning goes against the First Law of Thermodynamics in the case of energy at the beginning, or against the Second Law in the case of chemical or biological evolution.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Heat Death
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is what could be called the law of decay. Things naturally decompose and deteriorate. Biblically speaking, all creation is subject to the to 8:21, NIV). Think about the effort required to maintain a house. If one does not put in the necessary ordered energy to keep the house maintained, then its decay continues; the roof leaks or something breaks, etc. Eventually, the house will fall apart. The house will not evolve into an office building, an apartment complex, or a skyscraper, no matter how much time passes; the more time, the more decay.
It is the same thing with the universe. Unless God supplies the outside-ordered energy necessary to maintain the universe, it will run down. If there is no upkeep, the universe will deteriorate. Things will break down and lose any information they had. If we go forward in time, we will find that eventually all useful energy will be gone. Sixty years ago, one of my chemical engineering professors called this eventuality “The Heat Death of the The process of universal decay is continuing. Unless God intervenes, life, the earth, and the universe are not sustainable. Thus, the universe is on schedule to die, not by a bang, but with a whimper.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics: The Beginning
If we calculate backward in time to when God was creating, then according to The Second Law of Thermodynamics, we find that there was a definite beginning. Except to appeal to miracles, the Big Bang has no explanation for this requirement of The Second Law of Thermodynamics, that there was a beginning of the universe with the decay of the useful energy
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is precise and quantitative. My college textbook, Chemical Engineering is full of complex formulas and difficult exercises to correctly calculate entropy, which is a measure of how much useful energy is lost in a given process. These quantitative entropy calculations are in direct contrast to the hand waving and assumptions that attend our modern creation stories. The chance Big Bang, the origin of life by chance, biological evolution by chance genetic mutations, and uniformitarian ideology are all mental constructs.
Unfortunately, the reasoning power of many scientists is clouded by both sin and Satan as per 2 Cor 4:3-4: if our gospel is hid, it is hid to those that are In whom the god of this age has blinded the understanding of those who do not believe, that the light of the gospel of the glory of the Christ, who is the image of God, should not shine in (JUB).
God vs Big Bang
The Big Bang ¹⁶² is an idea that begins the story of cosmic evolution, a belief that energy made everything, including genetic information. Its order is the opposite of how God created everything. As reported in Chapter One, some of God’s sequence of creation is 1) Earth first, and then He created 2) plants before the 3) sun, and the 4) stars.
Some of the order of cosmic evolution is that 1) the stars appear billions of years before 2) the sun and 3) the earth, and then 4) the plants more than a billion years after that. The sequence of these Big Bang events is backward from what is in the yet some people try to reconcile these opposite accounts.
Big Bang cosmic evolution assumes that everything in the universe, including humanity, magically evolved from a one-time chance cosmic event named a “singularity.” This event is a materialistic miracle, an uncaused cause, and a violation of the idea of cause and effect and the laws of physics. Also, chance does not cause anything, despite what cosmic, chemical, and biological evolutionists believe. Chance may not exist; if so, then it is a mental construct.
The Big Bang is just a modern version of the ancient conceptual cosmic seed or mother egg. This cosmic egg appeared by chance, apparently producing energy. This fiery seed of energy sprouted into our existing universe. Supposedly the Big Bang was a chaotic mix of high-temperature, high-density energy. But why wasn’t that original substance from the mother seed either earth, air, or water? Why was it fire? Why was that cosmic fire hot, and not at a lower energy state? How did that fire produce our complex genetic information? There are no real answers, except to somehow arrive at a Pop Sci explanation for us being here without God.
A Creative Power?
Big Bang cosmic evolution is the unscientific belief that heat energy, which has no genetic information, has some kind of creative, innate power to combine to make complex and diverse beings from an octopus to us. This creative expansion is an asserted belief that once raw energy appeared, it expanded to make everything, and again, that is including our extremely complex genetic information. But what is the basis for this fantastic creative power? Is it magic?
Hot energy does expand, but it diffuses as it expands out and cools down without creating anything new. It stays energy. It is like the flame from a blowtorch. The flame expands out into the air and diffuses as it expands. Its heat does not, in one way or another, create anything new. It stays energy, but the burning fuel does raise the temperature, especially of anything in the way of its blast.
Figure 31. Hot, Bright Blue These blue stars are shown in a side-on view of spiral galaxy IC 5052. Blue stars are very hot. They are burning energy so fast that they would not be still existing if the universe were 13.8 billion years old. They would be gone. But here they are, in all their beauty. Spiral galaxies would be gone also. The obvious conclusion is that God created the universe young, not old. Image credit:
The “No-see-um” Stars
In the Big Bang, some of the expanding energy somehow made hydrogen, helium, and maybe a small amount of lithium. Some of the hydrogen, helium, and lithium gases, while expanding from each other, allegedly made the first-generation stars. However, these supposed stars are not there now. We do not see them. These first-generation stars were special stars, made only from hydrogen, helium, maybe a little lithium, and no dust or other debris, which was not yet present. But current star formation theories and models rely on dust and debris. This whole process of the first generation of stars, their formation, and their death has real uncertainty to it.
These special first-generation stars are “no-see-um” stars because, again, according to Big Bang cosmic evolution they all exploded, and that is why we don’t see them. They are not in existence. But purportedly, from all the subsequent explosions of these “no-see-um” stars, came dust, gas, and heavier elements. All this supposedly happened by chance, but again, chance does not cause anything.
Big Bang cosmic evolution requires billions of years. To some that may make the story seem more plausible, it implies that time has the special creative power of God. “The more time, the better” is how the rationale goes. But time and chance have no creative power. Besides, given more time, complex systems decay or break down, and the greater the effect of the Second Law of Thermodynamics in that there is less and less usable energy.
The “See-um” Stars
According to Big Bang cosmic evolution, after the last “no-see-um” star exploded, new stars somehow formed and some of these exploded. Therefore, exploding stars resulted in dust, gas, black holes, neutron stars, the heavier elements in our expanding universe, and the “see-um” stars.
Even though our universe was, and still is expanding, allegedly some of these “see-um” stars, including the lovely hot blue stars, grouped together. Supposedly, they formed into star clusters, and somehow galaxies also formed in the expanding universe. This included the beautiful spiral galaxies.
The Universe Is Not Old: Hot Blue Stars
The latest age of the universe is 13.8 billion years old. (This has declined from the 20 billion years age of the universe that I was taught.) Certainty about this very long age is especially questionable, considering that, basically, all we can measure are starlight spectra and intensity, but not speed. If the universe were 13.8 billion years old, then hot blue stars, as well as neutron stars in star clusters, would have disappeared. But there they are.
Defenders of an old universe claim that new stars are constantly being made from dust and gas. This claim is not scientific. If a cloud of dust and gas did start to collapse to form anything, the particles would vigorously repel each other.
If stars are constantly being made, then some should be forming right now. If so, then some of these stars would be “infantile” at 25% formed, others “one-half” at 50% formed, and still others “not quite” at 75% formed. But we do not observe any of this happening. No one has seen stars form.
The Universe Is Not Old: Spiral Galaxies
Many galaxies are rotating spirals. If the universe were billions of years old, then these rotating spirals, some spinning at very high speeds, would have been disrupted, undone, or all wound up. The very existence of these spiral galaxies, hot blue stars, and neutron stars in star clusters indicate that God created the universe young, not billions of years old. To explain why rotating galaxies are still here, theorists have appealed to the notion of dark matter. Unfortunately, scientists know more about what dark matter is not than they know what it So far, all tests for dark matter have failed.
Finally, instead of Big Bang cosmic evolution resulting in genetic information, one would expect that the expanding heat energy would just dissipate into the expanding universe. After all, if one leaves a hot cup of coffee on the counter, it will become a cold cup of coffee. This happened because the heat energy in that cup of coffee dissipated according to The Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Figure 31a. Assumed Timeline for The Big Bang with Inflation. The believed 13.8-billion-year-old history of the universe is pictured along with the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). This probe measured temperature differences in the cosmos. Some claim that these differences prove the “Singularity” often called the Big Bang, but could they just as well be the result of God’s supernatural creation? In contrast to the Big Bang’s materialist chance worldview, God purposefully created the expanding universe on the Second Day of Creation 1:6-8) some six thousand years ago (as per biblical genealogies). It is a bounded and finite universe that is expanding into God’s unbounded infinity. Image credit: NASA.
The Big Bang and Inflation
Even after having developed the Big Bang, theorists found that it was unsatisfactory. They had to do something to make this chance and non-uniformitarian “singularity,” work better. To “refine” the Big Bang, some theorists added the idea that just before the appearance of energy, space expanded faster than the speed of light. For want of a better term, this idea is called Inflation, (or Cosmic Yet nothing much is known about this later addition to the Big Bang
This tinkering around and adding to make things come out correctly shows that the Big Bang is not even close to being a theory but is instead a very flexible materialistic model that can be changed around as necessary to provide the needed
Testability
Continuing with the Big Bang, the most obvious thing about this belief is that it is not testable and may have been falsified. Concerning testing, recall the letter that the Freedom From Religion Foundation atheists sent to my university president. It quoted a court ruling that creationism was not scientific because it was not testable. Well, the chance happenings of cosmic, chemical, and biological evolution are not testable either. They are beliefs.
Concerning falsification, consider the idea of Inflation, which is often associated with the Big Bang. A prediction of Inflation had to do with of gravitational waves in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. When these were detected, some claimed that there was proof of Inflation. However, further analysis revealed all of the signals were due to dust in our Milky This non-result implies Inflation is falsified. Yet it is still with us. It is a belief.
Remember some of the earlier points:
1) Do not let scientific-sounding language fool you.
2) If a claim about nature is not testable or observable and then confirmable, it is not science.
3) The Big Bang is an idea that goes against the laws of the universe. It is not scientific. It is a Pop Sci creation story.
The words God said to Job in the Bible apply to both the mystical materialists and Big Bang believers today: were you when I laid the foundations of the 38:4a, NKJV). If materialists and Big Bang believers answer honestly, their reply is the same as Job’s: spoke of things I did not 42:3b, NIV).
How Long Were the Days of Creation?
Given that all secular age estimates are based on assumptions, what does the Bible say about the age of the earth and the universe? The Bible records in several places how long God’s creative activity took. One place is Exodus 20:11 (NASB): in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore, the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it
How long were those days? The obvious context that we are reading about is six consecutive rotations of the earth (six 24-hour days). As discussed earlier, that is how the Jewish people took those days to be. They adopted a six-day workweek with a seventh day of rest. We are not talking about a day being millions or billions or even thousands of years long, or a huge gap between some of the days. We have six consecutive, 24-hour days, nothing more and nothing less. In the words of Henry Morris: “There is no linguistic excuse for long ages
The Biblical Age of Earth
How long ago were those six 24-hour days of creation? The Bible recounts many genealogies. The first is in which reports the details from Adam through Abraham and ends with the death of Joseph. The broadest genealogy is in The Gospel of Chapter Three. It is Mary’s genealogy from Christ to Adam to God. The generations listed in the Bible add up to roughly 4,000 years.
Even if there were some gaps in the generations listed in these genealogies, the differences would be in tens or hundreds of years, not gaps of thousands, millions, or billions of years. If one adds 2,000 years since Christ, then we have the biblical age of mankind as well as that of the universe, the solar system, the earth, and life; they are all around 6,000 years old.
Adam and the Age of Earth
Even if the number of generations or length of a generation were slightly off, we still would not arrive at millions or billions of years for these ages. The genealogy covers around 6,000 years. Recall that this number is supported by a secular mitochondrial DNA study that was triggered by Tsar Nicholas’ DNA. This genetic analysis put the date of “mitochondrial Eve” at ~6,000 years ago.
Some critics have argued that Adam and Eve are mythological persons. Not so! Adam was a historical person. Jesus refers to Adam in both Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6-8 as at the beginning. Paul develops his theology around Adam: He was the first man and through whom sin entered the world. Jesus, the last Adam, is through Whom we sinners are reconciled to God. (See I Corinthians 15:45 and Romans 5:12).
Finally, genealogy mentions Adam. Where in this genealogical list did Luke switch from an actual person, Jesus, to this supposed mythological person, Adam? Is Abraham an actual person, but his father, Terah, mythological? The arguments against the genealogies in the Bible do not hold up to analysis.
Stars Too Far? (STF?)
Some Christians have told me that they cannot accept a six-day, biblical creation because of the great star distances in our huge They reason that the universe is so huge, and the stars are so far away, that their light would take millions of years to reach earth. Therefore, the earth must be very old. However, this is conflating distance with time and accepting unprovable assumptions. I call this questioning of the Bible “Stars Too Far?” It is a philosophical objection, not a scientific one because of the assumptions involved. For instance, the speed of light from the stars cannot be measured, it has to be assumed.
The “Stars Too Far?” line of questioning is influenced by Big Bang propaganda, uniformitarian ideology, the idea that the Bible is not true, and/or that God is limited. With the STF question, there are many issues concerning the universe that need to be addressed. For instance, is the universe bounded or unbounded? Is it infinite or finite? What timing convention should be chosen? Has there been a large value change in the rate of expansion of the universe? Also, as mentioned what should be believed about the speed of starlight? Let us look at this last issue.
Figure 31b. An F-16 Fighter Jet Fires an Amraam Missile. The top speed of the missile varies, depending on the speed of the plane firing it. But, according to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, the speed of light is always constant. Hence, a laser beam fired from this jet is the same whether it is fired forward, or backward, no matter how fast the jet is going. Did the laser light slow down when fired forward from the jet and then speed up when fired backward in order to stay constant? Further, only the two-way speed of light can be measured. There is something weird about the speed of light. Further, the speed of starlight cannot be measured; it comes to us one way. Thus, the objection that the stars are too far for a young earth creation is not scientific; it requires belief in certain assumptions. God created the stars that are now trillions of miles away all right, but not billions of years ago; one cannot conflate star distances with their ages.
STF? Some Unprovable Assumptions About Light Speed
Some unprovable assumptions about the speed of light are as follows:
1) That the speed of light is constant throughout all time,
2) That the speed of light is constant throughout all space,
3) That the speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of the motion of the light source, and
4) That the speed of light from a star is known.
Assumptions #1 and #2 about light’s speed are usually addressed based on the uniformitarian belief that we already encountered in evolutionary biology, gradualist geology, and radiometric dating. The basic assumption here is that the present is key to the past. But there is no proof.
Assumption #3 relates to the idea that the speed of light is constant. This is the foundation of Einstein’s 1905 paper, establishing his special theory of relativity. Many physicists thereafter promoted this view. However, from 1907 and afterward, Einstein thought that the speed of light can
Concerning assumption #4 listed above: The one-way speed of light is not known and never can be known. Scientists only have measured the two-way speed of light, and only within the solar system. Further, it is assumed that, concerning the two-way speed of light measurement, the speeds are the same both ways. Making this assumption gives a one-way speed of 186,000 miles per second. Since we do not know for sure whether this is a true value or not, then it is an assumed speed of light.
One-way light, from the emitter to us, is how we see starlight. This one-way light comes to us from beyond our solar system while, as just mentioned, scientists have measured the two-way speed of light only within the solar system. Recall that the one-way speed of starlight is immeasurable – it has to be assumed. That means we cannot equate a star’s distance with its age (we do not even know if the light from a star traveled in a straight Thus we do not know if a star is too far for biblical creation. One has to believe it is too far for biblical creation, there is no proof.
STF? The Biblical Answer
A biblical answer to the “Stars Too Far?” claim is that God supernaturally created the earth, time, the laws of nature, and energy on the first day. On the second day, He created the expanding universe when the waters above formed what I think is an expanding sphere above the waters below. At first, this expanding Aquasphere of the waters above was very thick. The thickness of these waters above gradually thinned as this Aquasphere moved out. This is an account of how God created our bounded, finite, and expanding
God supernaturally accelerated the Aquasphere as fast as necessary to make the universe big enough to safely accommodate the sun, moon, and stars that He would create two days later on day four. This was the beginning of the growing universe we observe today. On the third day, God created dry land and vegetation. On the fourth day, He created the sun, moon, and stars within the bounded and finite universe that is expanding into God’s infinity.
By this fourth day of creation, God had grown the universe to a very great size before He populated it. No doubt this involved a large value change in the universe’s rate of expansion from what we observe today. God accelerated the speed of light, or made light instantaneous, from each star such that, in one way or another, it reached the earth by the sixth day, either way, the speed of light is not constant. Again, this involved a large value change, but now with the speed of light. As a result, the stars were already “Stars Too Far” by the time Adam and Eve saw them on day six.
God placed the stars at their various great distances. They were not ancient stars as far as ages go. Red giants or white dwarfs, the stars were no more than two days old when Adam and Eve saw them. Only by believing that the universe is unbounded, infinite, observer independent, and assigning a speed for starlight, are the stars and the universe, very old.
One may have heard that the Hubble and Webb telescopes look back into deep time. More accurately, they look deeper into a finite and bounded space. Choosing to believe that a star is too far for the ~6,000-year biblical timeframe is similar to choosing other Pop Sci beliefs such as the Big Bang, that life originated from chemicals, or that we descended from a common ancestor. Certainly, many of our scientists choose to believe some or all of these stories, but that does not make them true. Christians should not accept any of these beliefs since they go against the biblical account.
STF? Biblical Creationist Scientists
Biblical creationist scientists such as D. Russell Humphreys and John Hartnett have done very thoughtful work in the “Stars Too Far?” area. In his book Starlight and Time (1994), Humphreys presents a standard four-dimensional universe (three space and one time dimension). But his universe is bounded, instead of the usually assumed unbounded, observer-independent model.
Hartnett’s article Starlight, Time and the New Physics (2008), follows Humphreys’ biblical approach. However, he added a fifth dimension, the velocity of the expansion of space, to his calculations. With both of these authors’ thinking, a star is not too far for a young earth. Others who have addressed the “Stars Too Far?” question, to name a few, are Danny R. Faulkner, T.G. Tenev, J. Baumgardner, and M.F. Horstemeyer.
Tenev, Baumgardner, and Horstemeyer chose a timing convention that is observer-dependent, rather than one that is observer-independent. Faulkner proposed that on day four God created the stars and accelerated their light rays enough that they could be seen on the earth by the sixth There is the additional consideration that the time kept by a clock on earth can be different from the time kept on a clock moving through space at a different velocity. Thus, a star moving away from earth would have a different clock time than Earth’s clock
Figure 32. The Heavenly Host and a Shooting God, Who is infinite, eternal, and unbounded, placed the stars at their various great distances on the fourth day of creation. They were not, and are not ancient stars. Red giants or white dwarfs, the stars were no more than two days old when Adam and Eve saw them. Only by believing that the universe is unbounded, infinite, observer independent, and assuming a speed for starlight, are the stars and the universe, very old. We, the descendants of Adam and Eve, can see the light of the stars they saw. God created them in His finite and bounded universe. No star is too far to see, even for an approximately 6,000-year-old earth. Image credit: NASA/Bill
STF? Did God Create an Earth-Centered, Expanding Universe?
In 2009, Blake Temple and Joel Smoller calculated that our galaxy (the Milky Way) is the center of the Importantly, their calculation implies that Earth is at the center of the expanding universe. This is the reading of Chapter One of
On the second day of creation, God made an expanding universe when He separated the waters below from the waters above. In which case, God’s action was certainly generating an earth-centered He supernaturally expanded this early universe as much as He wanted and as fast as He
STF? Discussion and Conclusion
God created the stars such that Adam could see them on the sixth day. Perhaps God accelerated their light (as Faulkner has suggested) or made the speed of light from the star instantaneous. God’s purpose was that Adam and Eve’s descendants had added measures of time. Besides the rotating earth giving us day and night, the sun, moon, and stars give further measures of time: Lunar months, solar years, and sidereal (star-measured) time.
On the other hand, the Pop Sci creation story speculates that both the sun and stars formed before the earth. Further, it requires faith in long ages. These beliefs are the opposite of both the order of appearance and the ages that are presented in the For instance, God caused grass and other vegetation to grow on Earth before He created the sun, moon, and stars. “Stars Too Far?” relies too much on belief in secular assumptions, especially since Christian PhDs have studied and thought out biblical alternatives. Christians who are influenced by Pop Sci beliefs halt between two opinions Kings 18:21) or are unequally yoked to secular assumptions Corinthians 6:14).
Creating the Elements
God made all the elements that we see on the periodic chart, from hydrogen to uranium. But the late British astronomer, Sir Fred Hoyle (already mentioned earlier), developed a theory for how stars could make elements heavier than the hydrogen and helium that supposedly were made by the Big Bang. Hoyle’s theory is called stellar nucleosynthesis, which could explain what is happening in stars and supernovas now, but certainly not at the beginning. However, recently the discovery of sodium-39 obscures the idea of how stars forge elements. Researchers made this new element with 11 protons and 28 neutrons with the RIKEN center’s particle accelerator in
What else Hoyle thought and did is interesting: Originally, he was an atheist who thought the universe was static and not expanding. He had rejected the Big Bang because it was too much like biblical creation. Hoyle is correct concerning the Big Bang. It is merely a miraculous creation narrative that leaves out God. Out of derision on a BBC broadcast, Hoyle called this Pop Sci story the Big Bang, but famously, the name stuck.
Hoyle then became a pantheist after studying the anthropic principle. The anthropic principle states that the universe is just right for us. That is because there are too many “coincidences” for all to have happened by chance. The distances, forces, and constants in the universe are perfectly fine-tuned for life to uniquely appear. Too many of these universal constants are uniquely fine-tuned for it to have happened by chance. The anthropic principle supports a Creator rather than belief in a chance beginning such as the Big Bang. All of this is beside the fact that chance is not a causative agent. It does not cause anything.
Fred Hoyle Criticizes Evolution
Once Hoyle became a pantheist, he criticized the chance beginnings and processes of chemical and biological evolution. Concerning biological evolution, he said, “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged through evolutionary processes is comparable with the chance that a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.” He is saying that we could not have been the products of evolution.
Concerning chemical evolution: Hoyle wrote that the likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is 10 to the power. This is a number that he said “is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” Hoyle is right, and his thinking sounds a lot like Wallace’s.
Hoyle wrote several books on the subject of origins, one being The Intelligent In the chapter titled “The Gospel According to Darwin,” Hoyle identifies Darwinism as the superstition of those with “so-called enlightened opinion” (p. 25). Finally, Hoyle thought Darwin’s original thinking about evolution by natural selection was initially vague. But after he received and read Alfred Russel Wallace’s letter, Darwin’s muddled thoughts were clarified in a flash.
This book spends time on both Wallace and Hoyle because they were, and still are, very respected scientists. However, they were not Christians. Nevertheless, they argued for intelligent design and purpose. Scientists who are Christians are often accused of being biased when they refer to God’s design and purpose in nature. Yet, as shown in this book with Wallace and Hoyle, non-Christians see design and purpose also, and for good reason. The bias is with atheists and materialists, who claim that there is only the appearance of design and purpose. If it quacks, swims, dives, flies, and walks like a duck, just maybe it is a duck and not the appearance of one.
Figure 33. The 2017 Splendid Kilonova. Merging “vampire” neutron stars are thought to create the element uranium, but no one reported detecting uranium in the kilonova of 2017, which was the merger of two neutron stars. No process for making uranium is known except that in the beginning, God created uranium along with all the other elements. Image Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab.
Uranium
Going back to element formation in stars, we are especially interested in the element uranium because often it is used in radiometric dating for long ages, such as the age of the Uranium is unstable and eventually decays to lead. Uranium first decays to thorium with a half-life of 4.5 billion years. The radioactive decay of uranium continues from thorium to other daughter elements until, finally, the decay stops at the element lead, which is Additionally, a product of this decay is helium.
The periodic chart of the elements is familiar to science classes. Of the naturally occurring elements, uranium has the highest atomic number (Scientists have made artificial elements with higher atomic numbers.) A specialized periodic chart in a 2019 Science magazine article, shows how dying stars could have possibly formed the elements not made as a result of the chance Big According to the accompanying article, dying low-mass stars mostly generate one set of elements, such as carbon and nitrogen. Exploding white dwarf stars mostly made other elements, such as manganese. The explosions of massive stars made still other elements, such as Uranium is a special case. Merging neutron stars are thought to exclusively make uranium.
A Kilonova from Merging Neutron Stars
Neutron stars are considered the smallest stars in the universe and were first detected in 1967. They may be as small as 12 miles in diameter but are among the densest objects we know. (Denser yet may be magnetars, a form of neutron stars.)
Neutron stars have a tremendous gravitational force and so can capture space objects passing by, hence the nickname “vampire stars.” Probably there are a lot more of them, but only about 1,300 are known They are exotic stars in their own right and are thought to be remnants of some exploding high-mass stars. On the other hand, God may have created them directly.
Mergers of neutron stars can happen due to their tremendous gravitational forces. Because the mergers are expected to end violently, the nickname for the deadly encounter is “kilonova.” One kilonova, the merger of two neutron stars, is known to have made an element, strontium.
Did the Kilonova Make Uranium?
Astronomers detected a kilonova on the of August 2017, just four days before the total lunar eclipse that same year. Predictably, their gravitational forces locked in on each other. Each pulled the other closer, resulting in a death spiral for both. The eventual violent encounter was a collision resulting in a bright blue explosion that slowly faded to a deep
Astronomers detected gravity waves, and for them, that was the big news concerning the kilonova collision. In related news about the kilonova, reports indicated that it formed heavy elements such as However, apparently only strontium was Strontium has an atomic number of 38. Gold’s atomic number is 79, more than twice as high as strontium’s, while uranium’s atomic number is even higher at 92. Thus, God is still the best explanation for the origin of uranium as well as gold. Reporting that the kilonova was a gold mine made for great news dispatches but unfortunately, astronomers were passing their ideas off as science. These reports were not evidence-based.
Solar System Formation
Even though the universe had been expanding, and the atoms supposedly formed by stars were moving away from each other, allegedly some atoms slowly collected together somehow to form molecules. Ostensibly, enough of these atoms and molecules collected together one way or another to somehow start rotating as a large mass. This rotating mass purportedly formed the sun and planets of our solar system. Elements such as lead, gold, and uranium somehow gathered together unevenly as the various planetary formations occurred. All this is highly unlikely, and the more time involved, then the more unlikely. The Second Law of Thermodynamics works against such a formation.
The sun and planets in our solar system vary hugely in every way that one examines them, even though they supposedly all had the same beginning. Besides the gigantic and fiery sun, there are the huge gas planets, Jupiter and Saturn, and the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune. Then there are the small rocky ones, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. They have different atmospheres and compositions that are unevenly distributed. They probably have different amounts of uranium, gold, lead, and other elements.
In addition, the planets are tilted at different angles and have different numbers of Yet, our rather unique sun along with these very different planets and moons are assumed to have formed together from the same supposed large mass of gas and dust, of atoms and This does not make sense or good science. Gas and dust tend to stay gas and dust, and even more so in an expanding universe. A much better explanation is that God created the earth, sun, moon, planets, stars, uranium, lead, and gold as implied in Genesis 1:1 - 2:12.
Figure 34. Our Diverse Solar is shown in order and to scale. There are fantastic variations just within our solar system. Yet supposedly all formed from the one and same mixture of gas and dust. This alleged combining of dust and gas over a long time goes against The Second Law of Thermodynamics. Gas, dust, and their energy tend to diffuse and spread out in an expanding universe. A better explanation is that God created the solar system. Image credit: NASA.
Uranium
According to current hypotheses, elemental uranium from kilonovas reacted with other elements from supernovas to form uranium compounds. Supposedly the earth was a ball of magma billions of years ago but slowly formed a solid iron inner core and a molten iron outer core. Above that is the mantle and finally the crust where the uranium compounds formed unevenly in the earth’s crust.
Like lead and gold, uranium ore is found in economic quantities in the crust only in certain places. An example is the Spokane Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington where hundreds of thousands of tons of uranium ore were mined on the reservation at places such as the former Midnite Mine. The uranium ore was trucked from the various mines to a plant right on the reservation that processed the ore into yellowcake, a type of concentrate. By God’s grace, I visited the reservation while the processing plant was still in operation and, among other things, saw the yellowcake being produced.
God, Lead, and Gold
Similarly, compounds of the element lead formed unevenly in the earth’s crust. At one time, Bunker Hill Mine in Northern Idaho was the largest lead mine and smelter in the world. By God’s Providence, I have been to this lead processing plant when it was in operation.
I have never read a convincing explanation of how these elements, supposedly all from the stars, separated themselves, then clustered together into different groups, and finally ended up unevenly dispersed in the earth’s crust. The best explanation is that God distributed them in various amounts, just as He put gold in the land of Havilah, (see Genesis 2:11 for the “good gold” of Havilah). Gold may be mentioned early in Genesis to establish the foundation for a monetary standard (or else set up the basis for its use in the Tabernacle).
The Solar System’s Age: Saturn and Ceres
As mentioned earlier, data from the Cassini space probe shows that Saturn’s rings are, at most, millions and not billions of years Further, those millions of years are an upper limit for the age of the rings. Saturn’s rings could be much younger, such as thousands of years old. This implies that God created the rest of the solar system, including the earth, young and not billions of years
Ceres, formerly known as an asteroid, but now classified as a dwarf is located between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt. It was thought to be cold and dead based on the solar system’s supposed 4.5 billion-year-old age. But in 2014, scientists in the European Space Agency spotted water plumes from Ceres. At that time, an explanation for the water plumes was that the “water . . . could be due to . . . cryo-volcanism, in which volcanoes erupt volatiles such as water instead of molten
Then in 2016, a planetary scientist at NASA released the following report: “Images from [the] Dawn spacecraft reveal[ed] . . . the dome-shaped Ahuna This giant cryovolcano (informally called an ice volcano) is “roughly half the height of Mount . . . “This huge mountain was a surprise,” . . . “We were expecting to see just fluid plains of lava . . . the dwarf planet is more than just a cratered ball of rock and Ceres is geologically active! The scientists were surprised. Why?
If Ceres were 4.5 billion years old, then it would be cool and dead. Yet it recently erupted and formed a gigantic volcano cone of mostly ice! How is that? Ceres is small; its diameter is only half that of our moon. If it were billions of years old, Ceres surely would have cooled off by now. It would be as cold and dead as our moon, which is not geologically active and certainly does not have ice volcanos, much less massive ones. Ceres has to be young.
Water Eruptions: Pluto and Titan
In 2015, images from the New Horizons spacecraft revealed two possible ice volcanoes on the dwarf planet Pluto. Mission scientists named the bigger volcano Wright Mons after the Wright brothers. Wright Mons appears to be approximately the same size as, or bigger than, the huge Ahuna Mons on Ceres. Wright Mons is also geologically Pluto, with its two ice volcanos, has to be young.
Similarly, Cassini spotted what looks like a cluster of cryovolcanoes on the largest of Saturn’s moons, Titan. The largest of these cryovolcanoes is Doom named after Mount the volcano in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the So here we have the real Mt. Doom. It is not in Middle Earth or New Zealand, but on Titan! The bottom line is that we have plenty of ice volcanos on geologically active bodies in our solar system. This should not be if the solar system were billions of years old.
Ice Volcanoes: Quaoar, Charon, Europa, Ganymede, and Miranda
Signs of water ice on the surface of Quaoar, a dwarf planet beyond Neptune, have been found, which suggests that cryovolcanism may be occurring on Quaoar. Patches of ammonia hydrates and water crystals on the surface of Pluto’s moon, Charon, suggest the presence of active cryovolcanoes or water geysers. Scientists have indirect evidence of cryovolcanic activity on several other icy moons of the solar system, including Ganymede, and Miranda.
If these distant small moons and dwarf planets in our solar system are billions of years old, then they should not have any internal heat left to drive geysers of water from their interiors and into outer space, or not have any water left, or else have both no heat and no water.
Water Geysers: Enceladus
Another moon of Saturn, Enceladus, is very interesting. The Voyager 2 spacecraft first revealed its unusual features. Later, the Cassini spacecraft detected what first looked like jets of water vapor and ice grains. These jets were shooting water into space from cracks in this moon’s surface. On later passes by Enceladus, Cassini’s images showed that its jets were geyser-like curtains of mostly water. Enceladus is diminutive, approximately as wide as Arizona (313 miles). Its mass is nearly 680 times less than the earth’s moon.
The Cassini spacecraft “discovered that icy water particles and gas gush from the moon’s surface at approximately 800 miles per hour (400 meters per second). The eruptions appear to be continuous, generating an enormous halo of fine ice dust around Enceladus, which supplies material to Saturn’s E-ring.” Most of the particles fall back as ice and snow “to the moon’s surface, which helps keep Enceladus bright Enough ice covers this little moon that it has the highest reflectivity of anything else in the solar system and therefore boasts a brilliant beauty all of its own.
Figure 35. Stunning Geyser-like curtains of water nearly continuously erupt into space from tiny Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. If this diminutive moon were 4.5 billion years old, then the water would be gone by now. Also, how did all of that water come to be there in the first place? The answer is that God created water and Enceladus, not billions, or even millions, but thousands of years ago. Image credit: NASA
Enceladus is continuously spewing out curtains of water geysers and gases. One would think that after billions, or even millions of years, this small, distant moon would have lost all its water. The water and volatile organic gases in this tiny moon should have been gone long ago.
Intriguing is how all that liquid water got there in the first place. If there is an underground ocean, how did Enceladus form with an underground ocean and way out by Saturn? How did a big cloud of dust and gas form a moon with a subsurface ocean? A better explanation is that God created this moon along with the sun, moon, and stars. Enceladus is not the creation of dust and gas.
Comet Hartley 2
Hartley 2 is a comet that the Deep Impact spacecraft flew nearby. The data show that our sun is heating water ice and a large amount of dry ice in the comet. As a result, the comet is outgassing so much carbon dioxide and water that the escaping jets of gas are “propelling discrete chunks of matter, inches to a few feet across, that surround the nucleus and are moving slowly outward from it. ‘It looks like a snow globe that we’ve shaken in space,’ comments investigator Peter Schultz (Brown University). ‘The nucleus has a posse of mini-comets around
Hartley 2 is loosely packed; its density is about that of a snowbank. It has so much gas and material coming out of its core and surface that it cannot be billions of years old. This dumbbell-shaped comet would be completely gone if it were billions or even millions of years old. The comet has to be very young. The implication is that other comets and the solar system itself are young.
There are no gas jets or water volcanoes on our moon or Mars. So, how did they come to be on Enceladus, Hartley 2, and other distant objects in our solar system? Again, if the solar system is billions of years old, why are water and gases still coming out of these celestial bodies? The answer is again that God created our solar system, and not long ago.
Magnetic Fields and the Age of Earth
Throughout the solar system, the types of planetary magnetic fields vary. For instance, Uranus’ complex magnetic field is tilted dramatically and does not align with the planet’s axis of rotation. Uranus’ magnetic field is off-center as it runs through the planet. On the other hand, Venus does not have a planetary magnetic field at all. How can there be such differences in the solar system’s planets and their magnetic fields when they all allegedly came from the same cloud of dust and gas?
For the earth, the latest data, based on past measurements, is that approximately every 1,400 years the earth’s magnetic field loses half of its energy. Extending these data backward in time, we find that the upper limit for the age of the earth is 20,000 years. Going any further than this timeframe, the power of the electrical current for the magnetic field would melt the earth’s mantle and crust. Thus, the earth cannot be even 100,000 years old, much less 4.5 billion years The earth cannot be older than 20,000 years, and by implication, the solar system cannot be older than 20,000 years either.
Zircon Helium Loss and the Age of Earth
Zircons are amongst the oldest known solids on our earth. Radiometric dating of some of these indicates an assumed age of 4.4 billion years, which is close to the assumed radiometric age of the earth, 4.5 billion
Until recently, no one had measured the rate of diffusion of helium in zircons. But now, creation scientists have done that. They measured the helium loss rate in the radioactive decay of uranium in zircon crystals in basem*nt granitic rock thought to be 1.6 billion years old. Their result is 5,680 (+/- 2000) years for the age of the That number certainly fits with an age determined from the genealogies in the This experimentally determined result is at odds with numbers obtained from ages based on the assumptions involved with radiometric dating.
Past Ages of the Earth
In the West, influential Aristotle (c.384 B.C. to 322 B.C.) reasoned that the earth was eternal. Christians such as Alexandrian John Philoponus (c.490 – 570) challenged the idea of the eternity of the world. During the Reformation, Martin Luther and John Calvin accepted the age of the earth based on the genealogies in the Luther wrote, “We know from Moses that the world was not in existence before ~6,000 years ago.
In the Scientific Revolution, the evidence-based science of researchers refuted rationalist ideas such as those of Aristotle. Isaac Newton, one of the greatest scientists ever, estimated that the Earth was created in 4000 B.C. Johannes Kepler computed that God created the world in 3992 B.C. And from the genealogies in the Old Testament, Bishop James Ussher calculated that creation was in 4004 B.C.
In the 1700s, some French writers, influenced by Descartes’ rationalism and extreme skepticism, started questioning the Bible and Noah’s Flood. Others, influenced by Hinduism, promoted billions of years for the age of the earth, even when there was no scientific evidence. British naturalists absorbed much ungodly thinking from these French
In the 1800s, uniformitarian erosion estimates for the age of the earth ranged from 20 million to 100 million years. Charles Darwin’s son George, a mathematician and an astronomer, determined from tidal friction and the formation of the moon from the earth that the new earth was at least 56 million years old. In 1897, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) calculated the earth’s age, from a molten state, to be more than 20 million but less than 40 million years old.
Even today, depending on what is being measured, erosion numbers still give millions of years for the age of the earth, and thus nowhere near the currently accepted Pop Sci age of 4.5 billion years. For instance, continental erosion rates yield 10 million years for the earth’s So there is disparity over the secular age of the earth. How did Western thinking go from thousands to millions and then to billions of years for the age of the earth? It started in 1896 when Henri Becquerel’s discovery of radioactivity laid the foundation for radiometric dating.
The Radiometric Age of the Earth
Secularists today claim the age of both the earth and the solar system is now about 4.5 billion years This long age came from measuring the amount of uranium and other isotopes in meteorites. Such a dating technique began in the mid-1900s with the Diablo Canyon meteorite. The impact of the nickel-iron meteor made Meteor Crater, Arizona. (I have visited the crater and have a piece of the meteor in my geological collection.)
There were, and still are, three basic problems with radiometric and a fourth when the age of the earth is asserted. They are as follows:
#1. What were the initial amounts of the
#2. Did the rates of radioactive decay change over time?
#3. Was there previous contamination of the
#4. Are meteorites the same age as the
Experiments, observations, tests, or proofs cannot solve these problems. Instead, they are all addressed by making, and then believing in, unprovable Regrettably, uniformitarian philosophy, geology, and cosmology tend to guide these assumptions. There are at least four basic problems involved with these assumptions. Let’s look at the basic four.
Figure 36. An Extraterrestrial: A piece of the Diablo Canyon meteorite. We cannot tell the radiometric age without making four basic unprovable assumptions. Therefore, the result is an assumed, not an actual, age of the meteorite, and consequently, an assumed age of the earth. Despite the lack of proof, the meteorite’s radiometric assumed age of 4.5 billion years is also assumed to be the age of the
Basic Problem #4: Are Meteorites the Same Age as the Earth?
Basic Problem #4 is the assumption that meteorites (initially from the Diablo Canyon impact) are the same age as the earth. This is based on the idea that meteorites ultimately came from the same supposed bunch of dust and gas that is assumed to have formed the earth and the rest of the solar system. The difficulties and unrealities of that unscientific assumption were discussed in detail earlier.
Additionally, were meteorites part of a parent body or bodies? If so, then did anything about its composition change when something broke it away from the parent? Without any evidence and no science, it is assumed that there was no change.
Problem #3: Was There Previous Contamination of the Sample?
For basic Problem #3, contamination is defined as either loss or gain of the parent or daughter isotopes of the radioactive element, or both. Concerning the age of the earth, the way scientists addressed the problem involved with contamination was to work with meteorites, especially the Diablo Canyon meteorite. Their assumption was, and is, that meteorites were, and are, less contaminated than any rock sample on the earth. Now, what does that assumption about using meteorites to determine the age of the earth tell us about all radiometric dating done on the earth samples? It tells us that all of the samples from the earth are contaminated so much that scientists do not trust the results! But is the Diablo Canyon meteorite (or any other meteorite) less contaminated than samples from the earth?
Contamination of the meteorite could have happened:
1) During the supposed 4.5 billion years the meteorite was wandering around in space, or
2) When it plowed into the earth, supposedly 50,000 years ago, or
3) While weathering after hitting the earth, or
4) During the retrieval, transportation, handling, and/or analysis of the sample, or
5) Any combination of the above.
Are all of the assumptions involved with radiometric dating correct? In reality, we do not know, but the popularizers of science, as well as many scientists, pepper them with technological language so that they appear to be scientific.
Problem #2: Did the Rates of Decay Change over the Past?
The way scientists addressed basic Problem #2, about the rate of radioactive decay over time, was to assume that there is no change in the decay rate over time, even over billions of years. This idea of no change is a very critical uniformitarian assumption, and without it, long-age radiometric dating would be nearly impossible. Just consider that scientists’ accurate radioactive decay determinations have not been made over that many years compared to the billions of years that the assumption of no change covers. It is a heroic extrapolation of the data.
However, studies show that effects such as neutrino flux from the sun or supernovae can change radioactive decay Small changes in nuclear forces can yield large changes in Thus, no change in decay rate over billions of years is an unsupported and unwarranted assumption. It gives us wrong results as testing with samples of known dates has shown.
Problem #1: What Were the Initial Amounts of the Radioisotopes?
The #1 basic problem for radiometric dating is that the initial amount of the sample’s radioactive material is not known. Again, no one has a time machine or a crystal ball to look back into the past and check. One way to avoid this problem is to assume that other elements in the sample can be used as a check. This idea involves additional assumptions about the other elements.
The resulting isochron method may have fewer assumptions than other competing models, but still involved are the basic assumptions concerning contamination and rate of decay, (although the influence of contamination may be lessened); plus, this method may have mixing Another way to address the problem of unknown initial conditions is to assume that the geological age of the sample can be a guide to determining the radiometric age of the sample. This approach presupposes that uniformitarian geology, with all of its own assumptions, can be a reliable guide. Again, this approach would be adding assumptions to But what if we test the
Figure 37. Mt. St. Helens Eruption A 26-year-old rock from the Mt. St. Helens eruption. The assumed radiometric ages of the St. Helens rocks that have been comparison-tested are up to 280,000 times their actual ages. Thus, the assumed radiometric age of the rock in my hand might be wrongly supposed to be up to 7.28 million years old. Radiometric age dating cannot be
Radiometric Dating Fails Testing
To test the whole idea of dating rock samples by the decay of radioactive elements, creation scientists took lava samples from Mount New Zealand, which were known to be less than 50 years old. They sent the samples to radiometric age-dating laboratories, where they were calculated to be up to 3.5 million years old. This calculation, based on unprovable assumptions, is up to 70,000 times higher than the real date, and obviously way off the It was not a 3.5 million-year-old rock! (By the way, for Lord of the Rings fans, New Zealand filmmakers transformed Mount with a few digital effects, into the fiery Mount Doom that is seen in the movie. Thus, moviegoers have viewed this particular volcano, but with special effects added to the original.)
Mt. St. Helens is a similar dating story to Mount Ngauruhoe. Mt. St. Helens’ recent explosive eruptions began in 1980. After the 1980 eruptions, subsequent ones were rather quiet dome-building events. In 2006, I visited the volcano. The ranger there passed around a rock sample that had been taken from the crater two years earlier by way of a helicopter. Handling this approximately 26-year-old rock, I was amazed! It looked and felt solid, just like any ordinary rock. Its age could have been thousands of years for all one could tell. I held the rock in one hand and took a snapshot of it with my camera in the other hand. The result is the somewhat fuzzy photo in Figure 37.
When a creation scientist sent a sample of 10-year-old rock from a Mt. St. Helens eruption to be analyzed, the result was an “age” of 350,000 to 2.8 million That is up to 280,000 times the actual age. The actual ages of the samples were vastly different from the ones based on the radiometric researchers’ assumptions. These scientific tests falsify the radiometric approach now being used to date rocks and geological formations. Radiometric age dating cannot be
Carbon-14 Dating
Carbon-14 dating does differ in that its half-life of 5,730 years is very short compared to uranium’s half-life of 4.5 billion years. Therefore, no carbon-14 estimate of the age of the earth is made. The short half-life means that any sample that has carbon-14 in it must be dated in thousands of years, and not millions or billions of years. But samples from every portion of the fossil record, such as coal, show detectable amounts of carbon-14. This means that the ages of samples are all young, and not millions of years old.
A creation scientist sent a diamond to a radiometric age-dating laboratory for carbon-14 dating. It was the first time this type of carbon dating had been tried, and the answer came back positive! The diamond, formed deep inside the earth, contained radioactive carbon, even though supposedly it should not have any at The situation with carbon-14 is basically the same as with radiocarbon dating. The same three unprovable radiometric assumptions are made, and the results for this measuring procedure come in too high also.
Of course, a critic could claim these samples could have been contaminated, and certainly so. That is one of the basic problems with any type of radiometric dating. But, as mentioned, researchers have found radiocarbon in coal and other samples thought to be millions of years Contamination is not a factor in this and similar cases.
Concerning the rates of radiocarbon decay over is produced by cosmic rays, and their flux did change during Noah’s This directly goes against the assumption of no decay rate change for carbon-14. Thus, the results of radiocarbon dating are significantly incorrect, just as they were with radiometric dating.
Radiometric Dating Conclusions
The conclusion to this section on radiometric dating is that the results obtained by this method are based on subjective assumptions and are vastly too high. Testing of samples with known ages has shown that the asserted assumptions of radiometric dating are woefully wrong.
The 4.5-billion-year-old age of both the solar system and the earth, based on the radiometric dating of meteorites, starting with the Diablo Canyon meteorite, is also incorrect. But then we already knew this date for the age of the solar system had to be incorrect due to data from our space probes.
Arguably, the 5,680 (+/- 2000) years for the age of the earth is closer to the correct date than the radiometric ones. And since scientists have assumed that the earth is the same age as the solar system, then the age of the solar system, including the rings of Saturn, is 5,680 (+/- 2000) years.
