The Write Place

I have often heard it said that the Bible is not a science textbook. The assertion with it is that it is not scientifically accurate, i.e. it does not describe the world or its origins accurately. What that has to do with being accurate is nill, as scripture is a collection of inspired historical accounts. If I shared a description of my day and that I boiled tea, it does not need to be a science textbook to be an accurate account of the natural occurrences I am describing. Even though the objection is a non-sequitur, eyewitness accounts are verifiable. Let us take a moment to look at a few concerning the first chapters of Genesis.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. ¹⁶ God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. ¹⁷ God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, ¹⁸ to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. ¹⁹ And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day.
Genesis 1:14-19

The Origins of the moon have never been explained naturalistically. The natural capture theory posits that the moon was caught by the Earth. However this has never been observed anywhere in the universe, neither is it replicable as physics dictates the foreign body would either careen into space or be pulled into the planet performing the capture. Such a capture is incredibly unstable and so unlikely that it cannot be assumed to have happened without assuming there is no God to perform it.

The moon also helps us cap the age of the earth. If you have ever put a tennis ball on a rope and swung it around your head, you will feel it pulling away from the center. This is Centrifugal force. The Moon does the same thing, and we lose it by about an inch and a half every year. The rate of the moon’s drift from the earth is also increasing as it gets further away from the earth. When we account for this we get limits, albeit not a precise age due to the drift.

Having its own gravity, the distance of the moon can be fatal to life on the surface of the Earth. If the moon gets too close the tides get too high and even closer cracks the surface of the Earth. This is known as the Roche limit, the point at which the Earth would be destroyed by the Moon’s distance to it.

The seasons of the earth are caused by the position of the earth, including on its axis. This is known as the axial tilt. We find that the wobble of the earth has not been a constant. As many may know, the north star Polaris has not always been the Earth’s north star. It used to be Thuban, but the tilt of the planet has changed.

The Dodwell Hypothesis states that around 2350 BC the earth suffered a catastrophe that drastically changed the axial tilt. Dodwell relied on some errors and his study is not considered reliable, it is an intriguing general theory the study of which also brought me to this interesting bit of information.

Answers Research Journal writes.

“More complex interaction, particularly involving the planets will gradually change the obliquity of the ecliptic. If the moon were not present, the obliquity of the ecliptic would change over a very wide range, resulting in tilts from nearly 0° to 90°. Instead, the stabilizing effect of the moon limits the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic to about 2°. Wild swings in the obliquity of the ecliptic would have very devastating effects upon living organisms, so there is a design implication here”¹

If the position of the moon were slightly off, life would not be possible. If the moon were not there at all, the swing of the axial tilt would be too much for life. This makes a strong argument for intelligent design of the universe while raising the question of study of the tilt as an indicator of what happened to the earth in the past.

The Earth’s magnetic fields, like any magnet, gets weaker with age. This is an incredibly important part of the Earth as a structure, as it provides protections from things like solar storms. There is an age limit to the earth because of this weakening of the magnetic field alone. The decrease in the magnetic field is something agreed upon by secular and Christian sources alike, and it is noted the field has lost 10% of its strength over the last century.

The age of the earth’s magnetic field, as well as the events in its past can be seen in the magnetic patterns left in the rock strata. The “Dynamo View” undergirding the Secular/Naturalist view about the changes in polarity stem from the assumption that the process is long and slow, originating from the earth’s core over time. This Naturalist model assumes the earth’s changes in polarity are long and slow, but the evidence pushes against that.

As already reported,20 palaeomagnetic measurements of a lava flow at Steens Mountain in Oregon have shown that one of these magnetic polarity transitions (part of a complete reversal) took place in about two weeks, the time period over which the lava would have cooled. As would be expected, the investigators, both evolutionists, were astonished by these results and had difficulty accepting them, but finally had to admit:
‘…even this conservative figure of 15 days corresponds to an astonishingly rapid rate of variation of the geomagnetic field direction of 3∞ per day. …The rapidity and large amplitude of geomagnetic variation that we infer from the remanence directions in flow B51, even when regarded as an impulse during a polarity transition, truly strains the imagination.…We think that the most probable explanation of the anomalous remanence directions of flow B51 is the occurrence of a large and extremely rapid change in the geomagnetic field during cooling of the flow, and that this change likely originated in the (earth’s) core.’21²

The evidence fits much better a rapid convectionary flow up from the mantel during the flood. We do see in Genesis 7:11 the “fountains of the deep broke open” so this is anything but out of the question. This would explain the mixed polarity in the fossil strata, and a one-year upheaval like the flood would be plenty of time to lay it all down.

The Model posited by Humphrey’s goes as follows.

1. Creation of the magnetic field along with the earth.
2. Steady decay for nearly 2,000 years until the Flood.
3. Rapid reversals during the year of the Flood.
4. Large fluctuations continuing for up to two thousand years after the Flood.
5. Resumption of steady decay from about the time of Christ until now.

We can expect there to be biological correlation to the biblical story as well.

²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. ²⁵ And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
Genesis 1:24-25

In the biblical taxonomy, all creatures are divided into “kinds” sometimes similiar to species, others Genus or fila. If this is the same world we should expect something of the sort to be biologically verifiable. If they had the first two ancestors as scripture tells us, would they not be able to at least reproduce? Well that’s what we find. One such study found Grizzly Bear DNA in Sun Bears. For those who do not know, Sun Bears are found in Indochina and Southern China, thousands of miles away from the nearest grizzly. Even with that distance, they managed to reproduce.

“We have to ask ourselves: Does the species concept still hold true, given there is evidence of gene flow not only in bears, but also in other animals?” Axel Janke of the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center in Frankfurt said in a statement.

But this new information fits well with the creationist worldview that God created animals according to their kinds, said Nathaniel Jeanson with Answers in Genesis, which believes the earth is only about 6,000 years old.³

In the evolutionary taxonomy that is unthinkable as they are a hard split between the two-over time. In a Biblical Taxonomy, of course this makes perfect sense because they are (and always will be) the same kind. Species and sometime Genus appear to closer to different ethnicities of a kind rather than separating towards hard division.

Let us turn to the next issue concerning the age of the Earth, fossils and fossilization.

“I am sure you may get into Q. R. [Quarterly Review] what will free the science from Moses … . I conceived the idea five or six years ago, that if ever the Mosaic geology could be set down [i.e. repudiated—Ed.] without giving offence, it would be in an historical sketch, and you must abstract mine … .”⁸

Charles Lyell⁴

Charle’s Lyell is known as the father of Geology, at least as it exists today. It is from him that we get the idea of the Geologic time scale, something disproven rather easily by the differences in top soils but more to my point.

In a rather related note, you may have noticed the tectonic plates of the earth. In fact the Earth is the only planet with tectonic plates.

But what’s the situation like on other planets? Do they experience plate tectonics as well, or is the phenomenon limited to Earth? Well in this respect, our home appears to be kind of unique. Sure, other planets are geologically active, but we have yet to find an Earth-like system of plate tectonics elsewhere in the universe.

How Stuff Works, Mark Mancini  |  Updated: Jul 26, 2023⁵

Alongside this let me mention that the earth still has a massive underground ocean (and many other such bodies of water).

¹¹ In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.
Genesis 7:11

When you line it up with scripture, you see that the two actually fit perfectly. During the flood not all of the water was from precipitation. A lot of it came from what are now empty or reduced caverns of water underneath the earth.

There is further evidence worth your time.

This is a Polystrate fossil. The Geologic Timescale stipulates that each layer forms over millions of years and that fossils are an average experience, by which we can date the rocks, which date the fossils. That is circular reasoning, and also patently false. Fossils are found all the time, cutting through “millions of years” of sediment.

This is a photo of Stucky the dog. He was trapped in flood waters and was fossilized. He is estimated to date from the 60’s and was found by a logging team. Fossilization is actually rare as most biological matter gets scavenged or broken down by bacteria, but you can see also it does not take long in the right conditions. In fact, those conditions involved being covered by running water and soil, exactly what you get in a flood.

Since I am on a roll, you may have heard of the term “genetic bottleneck.” The term refers to a massive killing off of the breeding population, resulting in reduction in genetic diversity. You can think of it as going from two full decks of cards to one or less. This results in more mutations and a weaker kind. You would also see a drop off in age as the weaker offspring do not live as long. The genetic information left in the human race correlates to the biblical account.

If the “story” of Genesis in any part does not correlate to reality, any lesson we gain from it does not apply to us because we are not living in that world. I have never seen abandoning a historical view of Genesis 1-3 end in anything but abandonment of other issues. Whether you or your children, the Gospel will be lost when you lose young earth creationism because without a real historical view of all of scripture, anything it teaches actually does not apply to you. It just becomes one of many other fantasy narratives that exist to meet your own fancy. For “the idea” to be what matters, you have to be living in that same world. The world scripture depicts from Genesis 1:1-Revelation 22:21 is the world you are living in today.

1. Dr. Danny R. Faulkner, May 15, 2013Answers Research Journal 6 (2013): 179–191. ↩︎
2. Snelling, Dr. Andrew A. “The Earth’s Magnetic Field and the Age of the Earth.” Answers in Genesis, Answers In Genesis, 31 Mar. 2016, answersingenesis.org/astronomy/earth/the-earths-magnetic-field-and-the-age-of-the-earth/#fn_21. ↩︎
3. Borg, Julie. “Creationists Cheer Findings in Bear Genome Sequencing Project.” WORLD, 27 Apr. 2017, wng.org/sift/creationists-cheer-findings-in-bear-genome-sequencing-project-1618209970. ↩︎
4. Letter of Charles Lyell to George Poulett Scrope, June 14, 1830, Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Edited by his Sister-in-law, Mrs Lyell, John Murray, 1881, Vol. I, pp. 268–71 ↩︎
5. Mancini, Mark. “Is Earth the Only Planet with Tectonic Plates?” HowStuffWorks Science, HowStuffWorks, 26 July 2023, science.howstuffworks.com/is-earth-only-planet-with-tectonic-plates.htm.
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