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Summaries of the contents of this section
In order to reconcile the appearance of great age to a presumed reality of a few thousands years, the 19th-century creationist Philip Gosse suggested that the world was created so as to look as if it had a prior history, and modern creationists have taken a similar view. By contrast, Charles Darwin’s problem was the appearance of design in the living world. He sought to reconcile this appearance to the presumed reality that life was not created, arguing that the continual improvements of natural selection had produced a world that merely looked as if it had been designed. But a theory that is false to appearance is itself likely to be false. This article argues that, by definition, creation brings into existence only that which cannot come into existence of itself and therefore the created world would not have had an appearance of age. Moreover, the universe no longer exists in its original form, so its appearance now is not that of the original creation.
The Earth appears to be, on the one hand, much less than 4.55 billion years old, on the other, much more than 6,000 years old. But can we be more precise? Recent stratigraphic studies suggest we can. Sedimentological evidence shows that the rhythmic alternation of chalk and marl in some Cretaceous sequences are not astronomical cycles, but annual. While this evidence is not sufficient to enable dating of the whole Cretaceous period, the duration of the chalk sequences appears to have been inflated by as much as 20,000 times.
Science needs to consider other possibilities than evolution by accident in one corner and the creation of immutable species in the other. This article looks at what a mutation is, and at evidence that the biggest changes in the history of life have been the result of genetic sub-programs being switched on or off by regulatory systems. Biological studies do not support the idea that evolution (which has certainly occurred) is undirected.
Tiktaalik roseae – a missing link?
This recently described Devonian fish has been hailed as one of the most important fossils ever found, plugging a major gap in the story of how aquatic life invaded the land. Is the fanfare justified, or is an ecological transition being confused with an ecological one?
A critique of The Genesis Flood: did animals escape to higher ground?
The idea that the order in which terrestrial animals were fossilised reflects the order in which they succumbed to rising Flood waters was proposed by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in The Genesis Flood, a book that made a huge impact amongst American evangelicals and is regarded by creationists as their founding document. Whitcomb and Morris backed up their hypothesis with a number of predictions, which this article tests.
Hades came into existence after the cataclysm at the end of a geological period known as the Hadean. It lies under the terrestrial crust. It also exists in a spiritual dimension, since its occupants have no bodies, but will cease to exist when it is thrown into what the Apocalypse calls ‘the lake of fire’. Tartarus, the ‘abyss’, also came into existence in the Hadean cataclysm. Geologically it is known as the aesthenosphere, the uppermost mantle beneath the present crust. The lake of fire has not yet come into existence. Its physical location is Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom outside the walls of Jerusalem. It will connect with Hades and with the magma beneath the Earth’s crust. Eventually, it too will cease to exist.