YEC Reliance
Young-Earth Creationist Reliance on Flawed Lyell Uniformitarianism
Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.
May 4, 2014
Although young-Earth creationists (YECs) are supposed critics of Lyell uniformitarianism, it is totally ironic that for many years most of their “dating” methods for a “young” Earth have been based on Lyell uniformitarian assumptions that they claim to hate and that geologists discarded long ago. Lyell uniformitarianism not only says that the geologic record is affected by the same processes today as it was in the past, but that the rates of the processes are basically constant over time (see “The 20th Century Transition from Lyell Uniformitarianism to Actualism”). In other words, if sediment is accumulating in a lake at a current rate of 1 cm/year, then rate must have always been about 1 cm/year in the past. Of course, this 19th century view is totally unrealistic. In some years, the accumulation may have been much greater than 1 cm/year, while in other years much less. The average accumulation rate may not even be close to 1 cm/year. Furthermore, erosion (negative accumulation) is possible during droughts and low lake levels. Geologists need to look at the deposits in detail to determine their depositional rates at any given time.
As one example of invalid Lyell uniformitarianism among YECs, YEC Barnes (1983) assumed that because the Earth's magnetic dipole moment has been decreasing since 1835, it must always have been decreasing since the creation of the Earth. Based on this invalid assumption, Barnes (1983) then argued that the dipole moment would have been impossibly high just a few thousand years ago and the magnetic field and the rest of the Earth could not be more than a few thousand years old (also see Young 1982, p. 118). In reality, the Earth's dipole moment fluctuates over time (Young 1982, pp. 119-120) and Barnes' Lyell uniformitarian assumption was completely wrong.
Although YECs have largely discarded the claims in Barnes (1983), they still continue to rely on invalid Lyell uniformitarian assumptions to promote their YEC agenda. Oard (2009a, p. 112) briefly mentions my rebuttals of YEC Dr. Humphreys' claim that the diffusion of helium from the Fenton Hill, New Mexico, USA zircons indicates that these minerals are only 6,000 +/- 2,000 years old. Dr. Humphreys, probably without realizing it, relies on Lyell uniformitarianism to defend several components of his totally invalid helium diffusion arguments. As discussed in the most recent (June, 2010) update of my Talkorigins essay, I hypothesized that sometime in the past extraneous helium might have entered the permeable cleavage planes of the biotites surrounding his zircons and possibly contaminated the zircons with “excess helium.” Later, when temperatures and fluid conditions changed, the helium dispersed from the cleavage planes of the biotites, but remained partially trapped in the much more impermeable zircons. This hypothesis could be tested by looking for 3He in the zircons and 4He in surrounding quartz grains. In response, Dr. Humphreys states that my hypothesis is not possible because the helium concentrations of the surrounding biotites are currently too low to contaminate the zircons. Dr. Humphreys has made an invalid Lyell uniformitarian assumption, which states that since the helium concentrations in the biotites are currently too low to contaminate the zircons, they must have always been too low in the past.
References
Barnes, T. 1983. Origin and Destiny of the Earth's Magnetic Field, ICR Technical Monograph No. 4, revised edition, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA.
Oard, M.J. 2009a. “Landslides Win in a Landslide over Ancient 'Ice Ages'“, chapter 7 in M.J. Oard and J.K. Reed (editors). 2009. Rock Solid Answers: The Biblical Truth Behind 14 Geological Questions, Master Books: Green Forest, AR, pp. 111-123.
Young, D.A. 1982. Christianity & The Age of the Earth, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, 188pp.