Humphreys' Fourteen Evidences for a Young World Gets Ripped

In this post, I am going to go through Answers in Genesis' "Evidences for a Young World" and dispel each and every one of them. I rely heavily on Talk Origins, but plenty of the links on more interesting topics are from other websites, so check em out!

1. Galaxies Wind Up too Fast
According to Dr. Ray Carlberg of the University of Toronto:
"There is observational evidence that nearby companion galaxies or an asymmetric, bar-shaped concentration of mass can drive a spiral wave in the disk of the galaxy."



2. Too few supernova remnants
Our universe is estimated to be 13.7 billion years old, and stars formed at an indefinite time after that. Most stars have a lifespan of about 10 billion years, and many are so far away (millions of light years) that we would not see their supernova until long after it happened. Lastly, supernova remnants have been observed (about 167,000 light years away), which contradicts the idea of a young universe.

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
It is true that comets have a lifespan of about 10,000 years; it is also true that the Kuiper belt contains them, thus it is not a problem for them to be less than 10,000 years old.


4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Apparently Mr. Humphreys is unaware that Erosion and Plate Tectonics can remove mud. Research your claims next time buddy!

5. Not enough sodium in the sea

Apparently Mr. Humphreys figured this up this up without properly estimating the amount of sodium lost in the alteration of basalt. They omit sodium lost in the formation of diatomaceous earth, and they omit numerous others mechanisms which are minor individually but collectively account for a significant fraction of salt. He was contacted about this, yet he has not corrected it.

6. The earth’s magnetic field is decaying too fast.
No, it doesn't decay, the earth's magnetic field has weakened, strengthened, and changed polarity many times in earth's history, and real, testable evidence for this exists.


7. Many strata are too tightly bent.

Actually, if these strata were bent quickly, they probably would have fractured. Take a piece of silly putty, for instance, and try to pull it apart quickly. Try this again, but this time slowly. You will find that the quicker you pull it apart, the less it stretches. The principal behind rocks bending over long periods of time rather than instantaneously is the same.


8. Biological material decays too fast.
Two claims are made here that should be addressed:
a)Mitochondrial Eve is 6,000 years old

She's no younger than 120,000 years old.

b) Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts
New York Times reported:
Earlier hopes of finding cells in the dinosaur bone have been dashed. Dr. Schweitzer said she could see no direct sign of cells, although a chemical stain that recognizes DNA picked up something in the holes where the bone cells would have rested. But she said she had been unable to retrieve DNA that could be identified as originating in a dinosaur. She and her colleagues had better luck in looking for heme, the oxygen carrying part of the hemoglobin molecule of the blood.

9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic “ages” to a few years. (Radiohalos)

Amateur scientist John Brawley investigated Gentry's claims directly by studying local rock samples, and concluded that there is no good evidence that these "polonium" haloes are actually produced by polonium at all, as opposed to longer-lived radionuclides such as radon or uranium.


10. Too much helium in minerals.
The helium results could easily be due to an aberrant sample. They could be an artifact of the experimental or collecting method (e.g., defects in the zircons caused by rapid cooling) or from just plain sloppiness.

Helium deposits are common in New Mexico, and excess helium has been found just a few miles from where the sample was taken. Source:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD015.html


11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.
New C14 is formed from background radiation, such as radioactivity in the surrounding rocks. In some cases, C14 from the atmosphere can contaminate a sample. Some things that can contaminate the sample: Sulfur bacteria, which commonly grow in coal, Secondary carbonates from groundwater that form on fracture surfaces, and Whewellite, a carbon-containing mineral, that often forms as coal weathers.

Source:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD011_6.html


12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Estimates that there should be 8 billion buried dead from the stone age, yet only a few thousand are found.

I wonder if he ever considered that over thousands of years the bodies might decay so badly that we wouldn’t have anything to find? Or perhaps some people were cremated (who knows?); or perhaps the grave markers wore away and the bodies are buried some place as of yet undiscovered. In any case, the number of bodies found does not prove the stone age was short.


13. Agriculture is too recent.
Um…. No. Anyone who studies civilization will know that we went through a hunter-and-gatherer period in which there was no agriculture. There is evidence of agriculture from 11,000 years ago, which is a little too ancient for Humphreys’ 6,000 year old earth. There is DNA Evidence that dogs were domesticated 100,000 years ago.


14. History is too short.

You don’t suppose maybe writing had not evolved? Apparently he doesn’t. Australian rock art has been discovered dating from 40,000 years old, which ties in to the DNA evidence that shows Australian Aboriginals diverged from an Asian population 40,000-70,000 years ago.


Also, there is an ancient Sanskrit manuscript that tells of a lake that existed in Kashmir. According to modern geological reporting, about 40,000 years ago Kashmir was indeed a lake in the valley of Kashmir in northern India. It was covered by a huge lake and it was blocked on the southern end by a little range of mountains. And at a certain point, something happened and it broke open and the lake drained out. And if it is to be taken literally, then it means that somebody must have seen this lake as it existed 50,000 years ago and wrote about it.