We have a property, near where we live, that we've been working on for over a year now that has got us in a holding pattern. We bought the nearly 2 acre property back in 2010, thinking that there was obviously room to put in a septic system. When we first bought it, the land was filled with JUNK everywhere, rocks, and brush. Little did we know that in 2006, the property had been denied a permit for a septic system (you live, you learn).
Scared of the mistake we might have made, we even called the owner of the adjacent property to see if she would agree to a payment for use of her property for septic or to see if we could outright buy her adjoining property. However, after a long time spent cleaning up the property, filling in a few spots, and planting grass, the Husband decided he thought the land could work with a drain field. He called in a private soil scientist who said initially that he did not think it could pass. He said he could do testing on it, but he wasn't optimistic.
For whatever reason, we waited and prayed about it. A year later, we found the name of another private soil scientist. He also was hesitant about the ability to pass it, but he came out anyway. On his drive to the property, all he saw were rock quarries, cedar trees (sign of rocky, poor soil), and huge boulders and rocks scattered throughout neighboring yards.
When he met the Husband at the property, he was shocked to find a reasonable place for the drain field just where the Husband had said it would be! He was able to give us evidence of a proper drainage area by taking soil samples and providing a map to give to the county.
This story would be great and praiseworthy if I ended it right here. It gets better. The soil scientist that we met is about the Husband's age and had known the Captain a long time ago through his love of outdoor things like kayaking and rock climbing. He is now a Christian with a science degree from the University of Tennessee, two things which are not normally compatible. He had all kinds of tracts explaining how Creation did indeed happen the way the Bible said it did and that Biology actually DOES support that!
It was such an answered prayer for me. I had been battling, for a long time, the "evidence" presented in my college Biology classes. I had asked God for several months to send me some answers to how Evolution can't be true and to resolve my last hesitations about the Bible. God delivered, in amazing fashion, as he often does when we WAIT! The soil scientist sat with me at our kitchen table for over an hour answering all of my questions and gave me more tracts to read. Later that week, I learned that my own church was going to be putting on a mini-series on Creation and would finish with a trip to
The Creation Museum, where the tracts from the soil scientist came from.
My biggest hangup with my own faith had been Carbon dating. How could scientists give us "evidence" the world was millions of years old, yet the Bible state the Earth was relatively young? How could the scientists claim that we evolved but the Bible claim that man was created in a day? I'm going to explain the problems with Carbon dating as best I can in short, written form.
Here is what an atom of Carbon looks like:
Carbon is an atom that is found in every living creature as well as plants and other things. This atom that I have shown you is known as Carbon-12. That means that it has 6 protons plus 6 neutrons and its atomic mass then equals 12. This is the "stable" version of Carbon.
A living organism also takes in a different type of Carbon, though, which is not stable. It is called Carbon-14. Carbon-14 differs from the picture shown because it has an atomic mass of 14, because it has 6 protons, but 8 neutrons. Carbon-14 is constantly being added to our atmosphere and every living thing (plant and animal) is constantly taking it in through the atmosphere and through breathing and digestion.
Remember, Carbon-14 is not stable over time though, so as the organism dies and begins to decay, the Carbon-14 atoms convert to Nitrogen through a process called "beta decay". Scientists then use an AMS, or Accelerated Mass Spectrometer to determine the ratio of Carbon-14 in the organism.
Now, we need to know how fast the Carbon-14 is decaying. A half-life is simply the amount of time it takes for half of the atoms to decay (in this case it is how many C-14 atoms have decayed into Nitrogen-14 by converting a neutron into a proton, which I'm not going to go into but you can find more (biased) info here:
How Stuff Works: Radioactive Carbon Dating).
So, to use Carbon-dating to find out how an organism died, scientists need three things:
1.) How much Carbon-14 was present in the organism at the time of death
2.) How much Carbon-14 is present now (we found this out using the AMS machine)
3.) The half-life of Carbon-14 (found in our experiments to determine decay)
We're still missing how much Carbon-14 was present in the organism at the time of death. We now have 2 out of 3 (which ain't bad if you're Meatloaf), so we need some more information. How can we determine how much Carbon-14 was present at the time of death? Scientists solved this problem by comparing the amount of Carbon-14 (unstable, changes after death) to the amount of Carbon-12 (stable, doesn't change after death).
Okay, so we're good, we have the amount of Carbon-14 present now, the half-life of Carbon to find out how fast the Carbon-14 is decaying, and a ratio of the stable isotope to the unstable isotope that will tell us how much should have been present at death. Bingo! Now we have a date.
Or do we?
We just did something that in another scientific field would never be allowed, EVER! We just made an ASSUMPTION! We just assumed that the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 has always been stable.
But, has it?
If this assumption is not true, then we can't use this dating process.
I know what some people might be thinking, "Well, we weren't around then with our spectrometer machines to test it, so we'll never know."
Well, I guess that is somewhat true, but lets look deeper. What could cause this ratio (currently 1: 1Trillion) to change over time? If the production of Carbon-14 doesn't equal the amount of removal of Carbon-14.
Time Out Here: Now, I'm not a scientist and I don't claim to know a lot about this, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that if there are either a lot less or lot more living organisms (plants + people) there is going to be a lot different ratio. In fact, I would hazard to guess that this ratio could have changed a little bit in my lifetime.
Anyhow, the tract I got from the Creation Museum, written by
Mike Riddle, talks about Dr.
Willard Libby, a physicist who was the FOUNDER of Carbon Dating. In his studies, he SAID that the atmosphere
DID NOT appear to be in EQUILIBRIUM. IE at the time of his founding OF THIS METHOD used to DATE things, the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 did not appear to be stable ratio.
In fact, Dr. Libby's calculations concluded that it would take about 30,000 years to get to equilibrium.
ANOTHER Time Out: The guy who invented Carbon-dating decided to completely ignore the fact that it would take 30,000 years to get to equilibrium and the Earth is still not at equilibrium? Whuuuutttt??? Why would a scientist completely ignore that data?!!! Ohhhh yeah... because he wanted to become famous and rich and the guy thought he could ignore that data because HE thought that the Earth was actually millions of years old and his Carbon-dating scheme could help prove that.
Okay so guess what! Those calculations he chose to ignore are actually totally true! The rate of production of Carbon-14 in the Earth's atmosphere is higher than the rate of decay and not stable at all!
So, guess what else! There are scientists out there that are figuring out that a HUGE FLOOD (umm see The Bible, Genesis 6:9) on Earth could have caused a major disruption to the Carbon ratios!
This Tract, "
Doesn't Carbon Dating Disprove the Bible" by Mike Riddle talks about this group of scientists, "RATE" who set out to discover the age of the Earth. Now, granted these researchers were sponsored by the
Institute for Creation Research, who believes in the Biblical account of Creation. However, if they have been honest and truthful in their research findings, then they have many found many powerful findings that support the "Young Earth Theory", that Earth was created only a few thousand (less than 10,000) years.
Here are some of the things that support a Young Earth and oppose the "Millions of Years of Evolution Theory", as listed directly in the tract mentioned, "Doesn't Carbon Dating Disprove the Bible" by Mike Riddle:
1.) Helium in the Atmosphere
2.) Helium in biotite
3.) Meteor Dust
4.) Buildup of Carbon-14
5.) Human Population
6.) Natural Plutonium
7.) Sodium in sea
8.) Sediment in sea
9.) Erosion of continents
10.) Earth's magnetic field
11.) Oil leaks in earth
12.) Natural gas in earth
13.) Orphan radiohalos
14.) Neutrons and strontium
15.) Coral reef growth
16.) Oldest living plants
17.) Human civilizations (This one is a big topic of discussion in our house. How can people have been as smart as they are for "millions of years" and only now be getting to electricity usage?)
18.) River delta growth
19.) Undersea oil seepage
20.) Uranium in sea
21.) Neutrons and lead
22.) Rotation of spiral galaxies
23.) Interstellar gas expansion
24.) Carbon-14 in Metiorites
25.) Decay of comets
26.) Interplanetary dust removal
27.) Lifetime of meteor showers
28.) Peat Bog growth
29.) Multi-layer fossils
30.) Hardening of rocks
31.) Decay of Saturn's rings
32.) Potassium in the sea
33.) Titan's methane loss
34.) Internal heat of Io (moon of Jupiter)
35.) Leaching of Chorine
36.) Radiogenic lead
37.) Niagara Falls
38.) Stone Age Burials
39.) Seafloor calcareous ooze
40.) Uranium decay
41.) Squashed radiohalos
42.) Carbon-14 in diamonds
43.) Carbon-14 in coal
44.) Magnetic planetary fields
45.) Recession of the moon
46.) Hot spots in the moon
47.) Helium in zircons
48.) Heat in rocks
49.) Blue stars
50.) Rings in trees
Need I give you more examples (to google of course) of things that appear to disprove that the earth is OLD!??
And what about this? Why is nobody making a big deal about this in the media? <Raising Hand> I know, I know!! Because, if we start to look at these assumptions being made in a lot of "science", then all of a sudden a LOT of things we are assuming to know are no longer "provable" and we have to admit that GOD MIGHT EXIST!
I know what you're thinking now.. How in the world is she going to take these "Random Thoughts" and connect the dots. Well, hold on to your hats and glasses, folks, because here it comes:
The Husband and I know for certain that the Earth is not millions of years old. If it was, that danged property with its millions of years of rocks would have been covered with a lot more topsoil from decaying plants given its location near the bottom of a natural hill. Then, there would have been no question as to whether or not a drain field would be permitted!
Thankfully, it wasn't that way though, and the Hubby and I had to pray about it and meet the nice soil scientist who helped me figure out that just science is supposed to based on observable facts, it doesn't mean that assumptions haven't been made along the way. He also managed to help us do the impossible: Get a permit on a nice piece of property that had previously been deemed unfit! Two HUGE prayers answered!