Question

Identify, and briefly explain, 3 ways in which the view known as ‘young earth creationism’ is inconsistent with well-established scientific findings.

Answer 1

Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism , a religious belief which holds that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God about 10,000 years ago. That means according to YEC, the age of the earth is 10,000 years as per the descriptions available in Bible. However, there are many others who believe that scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports the claim that the Earth is about 4.6 billion years old, while the Universe as a whole is 10 to 20 billion years old. Many people in this latter category affirm the intimate involvement of God in this process of creation.

But the views of YEC are inconsistent with scientific evidences. For example-

• No scientific evidence supports these viewpoints advocated by YEC. On the contrary, as discussed earlier, several independent lines of evidence indicate that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and that the universe is about 14 billion years old.
• Some creationists believe that Earth's present form and the distribution of fossils can be explained by a worldwide flood. But this claim also is at odds with observations and evidence understood scientifically.
• Creationists sometimes cite what they claim to be an incomplete fossil record as evidence that living things were created in their modern forms. But this argument ignores the rich and extremely detailed record of evolutionary history that palaeontologists and other biologists have constructed over the past two centuries and are continuing to construct.