NEWSPAPER COMMENTS

I have been engaged in a couple of online comment strings on the evolution/creation science controversy. I am always interested in the fact that we have such a great gap in our thinking, one that the universe was created about 6000 years ago and that it came into being 4.5 billion years ago as a Big Bang. When I first entered this arena I said the difference was so much that the answers should be simple and obvious, but immediately ran into the problem that all scientific explanations are based on assumptions. I had completed 12 hours toward a nuclear engineering degree and was certain C14 dating would be a definitive proof so I looked up the research at that time and immediately ran into the problem that the technique assumed that the atmosphere and high intensity solar radiation that changes Nitrogen to radioactive Carbon has been constant for over 100,000 years that didn't agree with the concept of a young earth. The age-old question has been what was the original earth and atmosphere like and how has it changed. We have a lot of guesses and not much proof of any of the assumptions. What I saw was that if the earth was young then the C14 technique would be fairly accurate for a few thousand years and then there should be a discontinuity in the data and when I looked at it I found that was true. Dates of really old carbon jumped in the data.

Another thing that has always fascinated me is looking at the demographics equations that predict the number of people and how the population changes. The census bureau uses a simple equation that predicts the exponential growth that is logical by assuming children produce children by doubling the population in every generation. The current exponential growth in the world uses an exponent of 1.7. If we used that rate and projected backward eight people would have produced the current population in only 1300 years. So we know that earthquakes, plagues, disasters and other factors affect growth, but to me there is just no way that people have been here more than a few thousand years that is compatible to a young earth theory. The person disagreeing with me on the comment string stated that the exponent was zero for millions of years. This is hard for me to conceive, but that is the current evolutionary myth belief.