WARM EARTH, HOT STARS

Likewise, Lord Kelvin computed that if the earth had truly evolved from a molten state, only a few million years would have sufficed for the earth to cool to its present temperature. Kelvin's results have been criticized by evolutionary philosophy as leaving out the heat released by radioactive decay in the earth. This would make the earth cool more slowly. But even with radioactivity, Kelvin found the earth could not be older than several tens of millions of years. This estimate, while older than the Biblical age of the creation, is still much less than the evolutionary age of billions of years. Similarly, volcanic eruptions indicate that the earth is much younger than the evolutionary consensus.

In 1963 a new volcano called Surtsey erupted off the coast of Iceland. In this eruption and in all others, water is released from below the crust of the earth. With one cubic mile of water being released per year in eruptions worldwide according to current estimates, volcanoes could have filled ocean basins completely in 350 million years. Again this age estimate is much larger than the Biblical age for the earth, but much less than the evolutionary billions.

We move on to other processes that indicate a similarly young age for the earth. In 1943 Paricutin volcano in Mexico began growing where there had been no volcano before. Paricutin released a huge volume of molten rock from below the crust, and in general, volcanoes worldwide release about one-fourth of a cubic mile of lava each year according to estimates. This much lava hardening into rock could account for the earth`s crust in a few hundred million years, showing how exaggerated are the evolutionary billions.

Now let's consider a cosmic process, the process of eclipses. Solar eclipses result when the moon moves between the sun and the earth. If the moon is positioned just right, the sun will be totally blocked and the eclipse will be total. For a total eclipse, the sun, moon and earth must be perfectly aligned. Such perfect alignment does not happen often, and in fact is so rare that total eclipses occur only at selected times. In other words, an eclipse can tell us what time it is.

Historians have actually dated ancient documents by timing the eclipses mentioned in them. While the occurrence of eclipses does not in itself tell us about the age of the earth, their use in historical dating emphasizes that God wants us to know about time. As we have noted before, the Creator's stated purpose for making the sun, moon and stars is to assist man in keeping track of time (Genesis 1:14). The datability of solar eclipses is one additional aspect of this time-telling purpose for the sun and moon.

Let's examine some more cosmic processes that give a young age for the universe. The diameter of the sun has been found to be slowly decreasing with time; the sun, in other words, is shrinking. At the present rate of shrinkage, the sun has a lifetime at most of a few hundred million years. In fact the sun seems to be generating at least a part of its energy by collapsing in on itself, by shrinking. Evolutionary philosophy claims that either the sun is not actually shrinking, or that the present shrinkage is part of a cycle of contraction and expansion. But this approach seems reminiscent of the claim that the earth's magnetic field decay is part of a long decay and renewal cycle, a ploy that is carried out simply to neutralize the evidence indicating that the sun indeed has a relatively short lifetime.