Dozen Thousand

It’s so encouraging that many public figures (by extension, many of their audiences) have rejected outright atheism and godless evolution! Even those who would never consider themselves believers have rejected some of the main pillars of evolution. Among them are people like Joe Rogan, Randall Carlson, Graham Hancock, Jordan Peterson (who does describe himself as a believer in some capacity), Ben Van Kerkwyk, and many others. 

What have they rejected (minus Peterson)? Gradualism/Uniformitarianism — a belief (it is a belief) that current processes are sufficient to explain how things were in the past. Uniformitarianism is the foundation supporting a belief that our earth is billions of years old, that geological processes take millions of years, and it serves as the bias behind radiocarbon/radioisotope dating. 

So what’s the problem? These same proponents of catastrophism (the belief that geological processes are best explained through natural disasters rather than gradual changes over long periods of time) still view the earth as being billions of years old. They still have an evolutionary view of our timeline. Progress is progress, so I don’t want to be harsh in discussing these people! 

But I would like to remind myself (and whoever may read this) of why I don’t believe the earth is any more than (at most) 12-15,000 years old: 

1. Population of earth — We double in population every couple of decades. Allowing for disasters, if humans (or humans-ish, as evolutionists say) came onto the scene 1,000,000 years ago, we’d have something like 1×10⁵⁰⁰⁰ people on earth today. The known universe couldn’t hold anywhere near that many people, much less our one planet. Since the current population of earth is around 8.02 billion (according to commerce.gov), we can safely assume that we’re no older than 12-15,000 years. 
2. Sediment layers across our ocean floors are far too “thin” to support an age of hundreds of millions of years. Sediment should be “choking the oceans” if the oceans were that old. The salinity (saltiness) of the oceans is another problem for old-earth proponents — it has been convincingly proven that our oceans are getting saltier with time (rather than remaining constant). Based on current salinity, our earth is no more than several thousand years old. 

Many other brilliant authors have written much more than can be contained here. I recommend perusing the Institute for Creation Research’s website, as well as Apologetics Press and Answers in Genesis for more proofs. While the secular world is still off on quite a few things, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that progress is being made. 

At least for right now, there does seem to be a positive trend in society’s thirst for meaning! Let’s make the most of this by showing God’s love even more. Let’s prove to the world that there’s no better life than a Christian life! Our God is coming back — when he does, the entire world will see him. Let’s show them that we believe in him enough to love like Jesus!  

1  Butt, K. (2001). Fighting the crowd over a young earth. ApologeticsPress.org. https://apologeticspress.org/fighting-the-crowd-over-a-young-earth-882/

2  Tomkins, J.P. & Clarey, T. (2021). The oceans point to a young earth. Institute for Creation Research. https://www.icr.org/article/oceans-young-earth