
Wanna Date a Tree or a Glacier?
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wikipedia.org (Eli Duke) 2018 CC-by-sa-2.0 |
Some people say that the Earth is really old because in Greenland we find ice sheets with hundreds of thousands of annual (yearly) ice layers. They also claim that in the oldest living Bristlecone pine trees we find more than 5,000 annual tree rings. Is the Bible wrong about the date of the Flood and Creation?
As with all old Earth dating methods, the techniques used to find the ages of ancient trees and glaciers rely on uniformitarianism (YOU-nuh-form-i-TARE-ee-an-ism)—the idea that all processes we see today have always gone on in the same way throughout time. Whether it is the decay of radioactive elements, the growth of tree rings, or the buildup of ice in a glacier, uniformitarianism is assumed. If uniformitarianism is false, however, and if instead the biblical Flood happened, the evidence agrees with the Bible.
If the Flood happened, an Ice Age would have probably followed due to the oceans being warmer and the summers being cooler for a few hundred years. In the Ice Age, the weather would have been perfect to create more than one “annual” tree ring in a single year, making the Bristlecone pines appear older than they are. Also, due to the conditions of the Ice Age, it is predicted that hundreds of “annual” layers of ice would form each year after the Flood for many years, making the glaciers appear to be older than they are as well. Even today, we see examples of more than one tree ring forming and more than one layer of ice forming in a single year when the conditions are right. The post-Flood Ice Age would have created just the right conditions.
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Bristlecone Pine Tree | Wood Rings |
Bottom line: if the Flood happened (and we know that it did), then the dating techniques used by evolutionists are wrong. Uniformitarianism is an incorrect assumption, and as we continue to observe the effects of catastrophic natural events like volcanoes, tsunamis, meteorites, and floods, even many of those who believe in an old Earth are beginning to agree. There is never a good reason to disbelieve what the Bible says. It has proven itself to be correct every time it has been tested over thousands of years.
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