Young Earth Proofs?

No Young Earth Creationist would be complete without a list of proofs for a young Earth.  Quotes of Hovind are in bold and are extracted from Transcript 1a &1b and later from Article 2. Click on a topic for more details.

 

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Now the second law of thermodynamics tells us everything tends toward disorder - everything is falling apart, nothing gets better by itself.  You leave things alone for awhile and they fall apart, folks.  Nothing gets better! ...... Nothing gets better by itself.  Everything tends toward chaos.....

Straw man The Second Law of Thermodynamics (in word form) states that heat can never pass spontaneously from a body at a lower temperature to one with a higher temperature; or no process is possible whose only result is the abstraction of heat from a single heat reservoir and performance of an equivalent amount of work. 

What does this mean in common language?  The first part, lower temperature to higher temperature, is illustrated by a cup of hot coffee in a normal room.  Heat will flow from the coffee into the room but wont flow from the room into the coffee. Its rather obvious when you think about it. The second part means you cant operate anything with perfect efficiency. It is this property of the Universe which makes it impossible to build perpetual motion machines.

What Hovind is trying to weave in here is the concept of entropy.  Entropy is the amount of randomness of the arrangement of molecules.  Within a closed system, entropy will either remain constant or increase. But doesn't that disprove Evolution Theory?  No.  The Earth is not an isolated system.  We are being bathed in free energy from the sun.  Life is able to harness this energy to perform its day to day functions, growth, reproduction, evolution etc. Doesn't this mean there is decreasing entropy (randomness)? No.  Any increase in order on Earth is more than compensated by an increase in disorder in the structure of the sun.  I must emphasis that this is an oversimplification of the processes involved.

For more technical detail see Thermodynamics, Evolution and Creationism

You may have noticed that none of this has anything to do with the age of the Earth.

 

Population Growth

In 1985, the world population had 5 billion people in it.  In 1800, there was only one billion.  Just 200 years ago, only one billion people.  Population is growing rapidly, nobody argues about that.  Everybody agrees that about 1800 there was one billion people in the world.  I have never seen anybody disagree with this.  All the textbooks and population statistics indicate about 1800 there was one billion people in the world.  What they do not do, though, is put it into perspective and say wait a minute, the earth cannot be billions of years old, there are not enough people here.

Straw man Hovind is implying because the global population grew six fold in the last 200 years it must grow six fold every 200 years.  Hovind has ignored population dynamics.  Why isn't the world drowning in rabbits? With the legendary breeding habits of rabbits, why aren't we up to our ears in rabbits? Population dynamics of course.  Populations of rabbits, or humans, are limited by the availability of resources, the activity of predators and the occurrence of diseases.  A population can not exceed its available resources.  Up until 'the 1800's' human population was limited due to the low level of technology and medicine. The Industrial Revolution and the advancements in medicine has meant humans have been able to expand beyond the immediate limitations of the supply of natural resources and the occurrence of disease.  For example, the access to oil and coal has meant civilization has been able to use more energy to power industry and agriculture than would normally be available in the environment.

Now there are a lot of people, but the world is not overcrowded.  I drove across Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, the last couple weeks.  It is not overcrowded folks, believe me.  There is loads of room out there.  Just driving from Pensacola here over to Tallahassee, there is plenty of room, nothing but pine trees and flat rabbits out there.  So, the whole world’s population could fit inside the city limits of Jacksonville, Florida, twice, that one city has 25 billion square feet.  You could easily crowd everybody in there, probably three times.  The whole world’s population!  No, it is not overcrowded.

Red herring Packing the worlds population into 25 billion square feet would mean only an average of 5 square feet per person (smaller than a medium sized car). Within this area each person must, eat, sleep, socialize, bath, go to the bathroom, farm, hunt, fish, recycle air etc.  Hovind's argument is silly and not even relevant.  The problem with human population is not the number but the amount of resources being used and often overused.

And, it looks like, from the population graph, that the whole population started about 4400 years ago.

Well if its on a graph is must be true.  Such extrapolations of course are based upon uninhibited growth. Also populations calculated with such methods don't correspond with the available knowledge of human population over recorded history.

The population argument as used in Young Earth Creationism is not actually evidence for the age of the Earth rather its an attempt to avoid the problems a compacted time scale has on the development of human populations.  The argument is defensive rather than explanatory evidence.

This logically flawed argument was used by Answers in Genesis as recently as June-August 2001.  Using the AiG numbers, there were only 250,000 people on the entire Earth at the time of Christ, which includes the whole Roman Empire and China.

Spinning Galaxies

So, let’s look at a few more facts from science here.  The galaxies are spinning.  They are turning around.  But the stars in the middle of the galaxies are going faster than the stars at the outside, which means if the galaxies were billions of years old, they would have lost their spiral shape and yet all of them are spiral shaped galaxies.

False Not all galaxies are spiral galaxies. Galaxies exist in a range of configurations.

Straw man This young Earth proof is based upon out of date computer modelling.
See Matthew Tiscareno's rebuttal

Red Giants

The textbooks in school if you take an astronomy course, they will say you know boys and girls it takes 100,000 years for a red giant to evolve into a white dwarf.

Caution  Hovind is playing fast and loose with the usage of the word 'evolve'. Red giants (which is a stage of a star's life cycle) don't "evolve" into a new species of star; they change with age.

By the way, all of the star evolution so to speak, is backwards, it is going downhill, it is losing.  They say it would take 20 super novas to create enough energy to create a star.  Wait a minute, now 20 of them have to explode before you can make one?  That looks like a winning proposition, doesn’t it?  You got to loose 20 to gain one, well, how did we get them all then?

Straw man  The fuel of stars is hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe.  Hydrogen is also the simplest of all elements.  Hydrogen was also the first formed based upon the modeling of the Big Bang. It is fallacious reasoning to assume the fuel available for star formation will be constantly available.

False You do not need 20 previous supernova's before you can make a star.

By the way, nobody has ever seen one form.  We have seen lots of them blow up, but nobody has ever proven one star forming.  They dream about it, they hope it is out there in the crab nebulae, but it has never been observed.

False  Stars don't instantly form. Nobody, except Hovind has suggested they should.  The formation process of a star takes thousands of years.  A supernova (which only a few stars ever produce) happens very suddenly and very spectacularly.

But it was observed nearly 2,000 years ago or so that Cirrus, the brightest star in the sky tonight, Cirrus is, it was a red star.  All of the ancient astronomers described it as being red: Cynica said it was red, the Egyptian hieroglyphics said it was red.  Yet today, Cirrus is a white dwarf indicating it happens in less than 2,000 years.  It does not take 100,000 years like they said.

[from slide] Egyptian hieroglyphs from 2000 BC describe Sirius as red. Cicero, in 50 BC, stated Sirius was red. Seneca described Sirius as being redder than Mars. Ptolemy listed Sirius as one of the six red stars in 150 AD (source: Its a Young World Paul Akerman)

False  A white dwarf would not be visible to the naked eye, let alone be one of the brightest visible stars, so Hovind is wrong on that account alone. Sirius is a binary system. Sirius A (the "red" star) is orbited by a white dwarf, Sirius B.

Many explanations have been put forward to explain why ancient astronomers label Sirius A a red star. Explanations range from linguistic or cultural differences to natural phenomena.  

It is interesting to note this sudden change from "red giant to white dwarf" has never been observed again in 2,000 years.  Nor have any beginnings of high speed changes in red giants been observed even after a century of observation with sensitive mechanized telescopes.

Now lets play a little armchair logic. Imagine Hovind's argument is somehow valid. What would this 'proof' indicate? At best, this 'proof' would show stars go from red giants to white dwarfs very quickly. Now how does this prove the Earth is young? It doesn't. Even in the best possible scenario Hovind's 'proof' has nothing to do with the age of the Earth.

Cooling Planets

The universe is falling apart, that is for sure; some of the planets are cooling off rapidly.  They are losing heat twice as fast as they gain it.  You cannot keep cooling off till pretty soon you are cooled off.  .....

I suspect the planets Hovind is referring to are Jupiter and Saturn. Explained by Dave Matson  Planets Cooling Off

There is another variation of this argument within Young Earth Creationist circles regarding the temperature of the Earth's core attributed to Lord Kelvin. However what these claims fail to mention is there was no knowledge of radioactive decay at the time Lord Kelvin postulated his theories.

Saturn's Rings

The planet Saturn has rings around it but the rings are moving away from the planet, they are gradually expanding out.  They cannot be billions of years old; they would have been gone by now.  When voyagers sailed to one of the rings of Saturn, they said it looked like it was braided.  They said Man, all these particles are in motion.  You cannot keep that finely, braided texture from millions of years.  Probably less than 10,000 years is a reasonable estimate. .....

Straw man The age of Saturns rings or the expected lifespan of any patterns is irrelevant to the age of the Earth or even Saturn. See Dave Matson's rebuttal for more details.

Drifting Moon

A couple of more facts here. ..... As the moon goes around the earth, the moon is gradually getting farther away.  We are slowly losing the moon.  It is only a couple inches a year, no big deal, nothing to worry about;...... Well, if you bring the moon back in closer, you create a problem.  See, the moon is what causes the tides. ..... if the moon was closer, the tides would be higher.  There is a law in physics called the inverse square law, if you half the distance, you quadruple the attraction. So, a couple of billion years ago, the moon was in so close that the tides were so high, that it would drown everything on earth twice a day.  You can only drown comfortably once a day.  It just cannot be billions of years old, I am sorry about that!

Another golden oldie from the creationist barrel of "proofs" but as usual this argument is seriously flawed

See  The Recession of the Moon and the Age of the Earth-Moon System

Moon Dust

I have right here on the floor-since I am in my home city here-I have an actual porthole from a space capsule.  It is so pitted, you can hardly see through it. .....  The reason it is pitted is because outer space is full of dust.  And when they are traveling around at 18,000 miles an hour, they run into the dust and it hits the glass.  Well, the earth and the moon are running around together-they’re running around the sun at about 66,000 miles an hour.  So the earth and the moon are running into all this dust in space.  Kind of like your windshield collects bugs certain times of the year, and it gets thicker and thicker on the surface of the moon and on the earth, this dust does, because it is running into it.  The problem is, on earth we have air, which makes wind and water and any dust that lands here gets mixed in. Once in awhile you will see a little bit on your furniture from time to time.  How many have seen [some] of that before?

False The dust on your furniture does not come from outer space (well, okay, maybe a little bit of it)

This cosmic dust coming in from outer space generally gets incorporated into soil.  But on the moon they have no wind and no water.  So any dust that lands on the moon is going to be undisturbed.

Evolutionary Prediction

Well, before they went to land on the moon in 1969, they were very concerned that going to the moon would be a problem because of the dust on the moon.  They did all sorts of studies and decided the dust would be an inch thick every 10,000 years.

Actually it was only one study, using dust in Hawaii, which suggested this figure as the highest amount of a large range of possible accumulation rates. The study was peer reviewed and found to contain errors.  Henry Morris, of ICR, resurrected this study in 1974.  Morris ignored the original range calculation, and simply took the highest number as an absolute. So, Creation Science is using a corrupted version of one inaccurate study which was rejected for technical reasons at least 30 years ago.  Kent Hovind is likely the only Creation Science preacher who still uses this argument.

For more detail see Meteorite Dust and the Age of the Earth

False  The Apollo 11 mission was not the first moon landing, rather it was the first manned landing.  Previously there were five successful Surveyor landings.

They said, “Man the moon is billions of years old, wow! Billions of years divided by 10,000, there is going to be a lot of dust on the moon!”  They were concerned the guys would actually sink into the dust.  I talked to the guy that created, designed, and built the radio back pack that Armstrong was wearing when he was on the moon.  He was instructed, he is a pastor in Wisconsin now, he said, “I was instructed to make the back pack dust-proof just in case they sank into the dust.  We thought there might be a problem [and] we want to be able to communicate with the guys.”  Hey, how are you doing down there?  Sank into the dust!  So to prevent the spacecraft from sinking in, they put huge landing pads on the spacecraft to prevent it from sinking in.  They call it the snow shoe affect, spread the weight out.  Cost millions of dollars more to add these duck feet, they called them.  They were worried about the spacecraft sinking into the dust.  It was a very serious concern.  I listened to the conversation of the guys when they landed on the moon, the whole conversation, I have got it at home about 45 minutes to an hour.  Most of their conversation centers around one question, “Where is the dust?”  They talked about how deep the lunar pads sank in, about a half inch.  Even the rocket that let them go down slow, the retro-rocket that lets them down slow, they thought it would blow a huge crater, not even an inch deep.  Where is all the dust up there?  The dust was about a half-inch thick.

Straw man I am not quite sure how to categorize Hovind's claim here.  Whilst some references to dust were made it was not to the extent which Hovind claims. You can read the transcripts for yourself if you wish.

Young Earth Upheld

Well, in 1972 after they had been to the moon several times, they revised the calculation of how much dust there should be so that it would fit the evolution theory.  But I do not know how much dust there should be or should not be, but I know this, the evolution theory failed to predict the right amount. .....

Straw man  Since Evolution Theory has nothing to do with the age of the Moon that was a strange statement to make.

The moon dust argument is so flawed even other Young Earth Creationists warn against using it;

"This [moon dust accumulation] remained a mystery until new meteor flux measurements in the early 1970's were far lower, consistent with the measured depth of lunar dust and an old age. Creationists apparently were ignorant of these newer measurements that were consistent with an ancient moon, and were rightly criticized for this lapse. Snelling and Rush have reevaluated this issue, and they recommended against using this argument for recent creation." (Faulkner, D.R. 1998, The Current State of Creation Astronomy, Fourth International Conference on Creationism http://www.icr.org/research/df/df-r01.htm )

NEWS FLASH:  Kent Hovind claimed on 7 January 2002 to have abandoned this Moon Dust Argument [1].  He now claims he has a new version but won't use it because there is too much "wiggle room" for mainstream science. Yet in February 2002 you could still find Hovind using the argument on his web site but only with the cryptic warning of "Insufficient evidence to be positive".

See also http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/moondust.html 

[1]     http://www.cbbc.net/RS/ 6 Jan 2002 Session #5 @ 8:00

Comets

All through our solar system we have what is called short period comets.  They come around, like Haley’s [sic] comet; they come around every once in a while.  They can predict how often they will be here.  76 years, I think for Haley’s [sic] Comet.  Well, short period comets are constantly losing material as the solar wind blows the tail off of them.  They have a life span of less than 10,000 years.  So why do we still have comets in the solar system?  They prove the solar system is not billions of years old.  Now, the evolutionists have said well maybe there is (some guy name Ort [sic] ), said maybe there is a cloud out there that is producing comets and sending them in once in awhile and when a passing star comes by, it disrupts them and knocks comets into our solar system.  Well nobody has ever seen that happen once. So that is religion, that is what they believe.  Nobody has ever seen the Ort [sic] cloud, for that matter.  It is all theory!

The correct spelling are "Oort Cloud" and "Halley's Comet".  For a description of what the Oort Cloud hypothesis is see  http://www.solarviews.com/eng/oort.htm  See also The Kuiper Belt and The Oort Cloud

Straw man Kent Hovind, the science teacher, should know the word theory has a specific meaning in science terminology differant to common usage. Maybe he does know but is deliberately misleading his audience.

Dave Matson has rebutted this "proof" Short Period Comets

Even then, that does not explain the bigger problem of where did the original matter come from for the Ort [sic] cloud?

Red herring The hypothesis is comets are remnants from the formation of the solar system. Whether or not the exact origin of the "original matter" is known is irrelevant to the present existence of this matter.

So this Ort [sic] cloud idea is just simply religion, it is conjecture; it is not science at all!

An explanation based upon observations, capable of falsification and is useful for making predictions about future observations is the very definition of a good scientific theory.

Contradiction Did Hovind just say religion is not compatible with science?

The short period comets are a problem for the evolutionist because they should all be gone by now.  Some people say, well, hey 10,000 years, why aren't most of them gone for you creationists if the earth is 6,000 years old?  Well, I think a lot of the comets were formed when there was quite a catastrophe.  At the time of the Flood, I cover that on video tape number 6, What caused the Flood?  If an ice meteor came flying through space and hit something, it would make debris flying all over the place right now; we cover a lot of that on video tape number 6 about the ice meteor.  Maybe the comets are only 4400 years old.

The Hovind Theory has been fully rebutted

Magnetic field decline

.....  The earth has the magnetic field around it.  Now this magnetic field around the earth acts as a barrier to protect us from ultraviolet radiation, a lot of stuff is coming off the sun and stars besides just light.  A lot of this UV light and the high energy radiation hits the magnetic field and is deflected to the poles, that is what causes the Northern lights and the Southern lights. .....

False UV light is blocked by the ozone layer.

False The Earth's magnetic field deflects a substantial quantity of the solar wind and channels the remaining charged atomic particles into the Earths atmosphere around the poles.  UV light is not affect by the Earth's magnetic field.

See  Planet Earth: a great magnet

Well, this magnetic field protects the earth, but studies have shown consistently that the magnetic field is getting weaker and weaker.  We are slowly losing the magnetic field. This means it used to be stronger obviously, there is a limit to how strong it can be or a life cannot exist here.  If you made the magnetic field 30 or 40 times stronger than it is now, the heat generated would destroy everything.  You could not have life on earth with a lot stronger magnetic field.

So if the earth is billions of years old, the evolutionist has to have an answer for that.  He says well the magnetic field is reversing, it is in a cycle.  Well, we have never seen that; we have seen it decline and that is all we have seen.  Now if you want to pretend or imagine that it is reversing, you are welcome to.  If you want to use the jumbled up lines at the bottom of the Midatlantic [sic] Ridge for your evidence, you are welcomed to do that, but that is not conclusive proof that the magnetic field is reversing at all.  There are lots of other explanations for those magnetic lines at the bottom of the earth and Midatlantic [sic] Ridge.  We have seen the magnetic field decline, which could indicate that your earth is not billions of years old.

Excellent technical rebuttal from Dave Matson Declining Magnetic Field?

Another serious problem, the magnetic field protects the earth from this radiation.

False This is the second time Hovind makes this erroneous statement

The radiation that does get through, hits the atmosphere and creates Carbon 14.  Now Carbon 14 is dependent on how much radiation gets in, so if the magnetic field were stronger, you would have less Carbon 14 in the atmosphere because less radiation could get in.  So you cannot date anything by carbon dating because they assume that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere today is what it has always been, faulty assumption.  We have a rubber ruler to measure these things with, we get into that a lot more in video tape number 7, question, answers, and how carbon dating works and the problems associated with it. .....

Straw man No one assumes C14 has been perfectly constant in the atmosphere. Which is why it is necessary to calibrate C14 method with other independent methods.

Kent Hovind has made some extraordinary claims about Carbon Dating over the years.  Here are some excellent rebuttals written by Dave Matson Matson v Hovind - Radiometric Dating

Also see the Ice Core Layers Young Earth proof championed by Hovind.

Slowing Earth

Another factor.  The earth is spinning - we are turning around.  How many kneew [sic] that already?  We are turning around.  You know the earth is going a little over 1,000 miles an hour at the equator, but the earth is slowing down.  It is actually slowing down 1000th of a second everyday.  Pensacola News Journal, 1990, said on December 6, “Earth’s rotation is slowing down, June will be one second longer than normal. The earth is slowing down 1000th of a second every day.”  Astronomy magazine announced, 1992 in the June edition, “Earth’s rotation is slowing down, June is going to be one second longer than normal.”  We will have to have a “leap second.”  A leap second?  Most people have heard of leap year, but lots of folks have never heard of leap second.  Did you know we have a leap second about every year and a half now because the earth is slowing down? .....

Hovind is so wrong it is bordering on wilful ignorance

False The Earth is not slowing down at a rate of 1,000th of a second everyday.  That is, the amount of shortfall between the length of an official atomic day (86,400 seconds) and an actual Earth day.  I will let the US Navel Observatory explain this one (beware, it may bend your mind) http://maia.usno.navy.mil/eo/leapsec.html

"Confusion sometimes arises over the misconception that the regular insertion of leap seconds every few years indicates that the Earth should stop rotating within a few millennia. The confusion arises because some mistake leap seconds for a measure of the rate at which the Earth is slowing. The 1 second increments are, however, indications of the accumulated difference in time between the two systems.  (Also, it is important to note that the current difference in the length of day from 86,400 seconds is the accumulation over nearly two centuries, not just the previous year.)  As an example, the situation is similar to what would happen if a person owned a watch that lost 2 seconds per day. If it were set to a perfect clock today, the watch would be found to be slow by 2 seconds tomorrow. At the end of a month, the watch will be roughly a minute in error (30 days of 2 second error  accumulated each day). The person would then find it convenient to reset the watch by one minute to have the correct time again."

"This scenario is analogous to that encountered with the leap second. The difference is that instead of setting the clock that is running slow, we choose to set the clock that is keeping a uniform, precise time. The reason for this is that we can change the time on an atomic clock, while it is not possible to alter the Earth's rotational speed to match the atomic clocks!  Currently the Earth runs slow at roughly 2 milliseconds per day. After 500 days, the difference between the Earth rotation time and the atomic time would be 1 second. Instead of allowing this to happen, a leap second is inserted to bring the two times closer together."

Now for the question of the slowing Earth.  Yes the Earth is slowing but that does not help Hovind and actually puts him in a worse position than when he started.  See Is the Earth Slowing? by Dave Matson for more detail.

 

Sahara Desert

Did you know the Sahara Desert has what is called a prevailing wind pattern?  The wind almost always blows the same direction.  But that creates a problem because as the ground dries out and turns to desert, it keeps spreading. [The] Sahara Desert is growing.  Now people living along the edge are speeding up the process, but even without people the desert would grow.  Right now it is growing 4 to 5 miles a year.  Well, [the] Sahara Desert is only 1300 miles north to south.  It can only be a few thousand years old.  Now, that does not prove the universe is a few thousand years old, I understand all that, but it is interesting [that] it fits what the Bible says.  See the Bible says God created the world about 6,000 years ago.  4400 years ago there was flood.  It is pretty hard to have a desert under a flood and so the desert had to start forming after The Flood was gone.  Common sense?  So if the earth is billions of years old, why do we not have a bigger desert some place?  Why is it only a few thousand years old?  Interesting!

Contradiction Hovind admits that this isn't a Young Earth Proof so why does he even mention it?

For a little information about the Sahara Desert click here

For information about the recent history of the world's deserts click here

Oil Pressure

..  The oil is under incredible pressure down there; it will come squirting up out of the ground like a big zit, because oil wells sometimes have 20,000 pounds per square inch.  Put  that in your back tires and watch what happens! 20,000 psi!  The guys who study the rocks on top of the oil, say you know that rock cannot handle that pressure for more than probably 10 or 15,000 years.  The rock should have cracked; the pressure should have leaked off.  Okay, well than I have two obvious questions. Where did the oil come from and why is it still under pressure?  If the pressure can only last 10,000 years, why is there still pressure down there?  .......

Straw man Hovind's argument is based upon the erroneous assumption oil doesn't move.  In fact oil and gas do move but at different rates depending on geologic conditions. See Dave Matson's Oil and Gas Pressure rebuttal for more detail.

Ice Core Layers

I was in Denver, Colorado, ....  I got to go inside the Denver [sic] National Ice Core Laboratory.  I got to meet the guys that drill the holes in Greenland and the South Pole.  They actually drill holes through the ice and pull up a core of ice.  ...... The deepest hole they have ever drilled is 10,000 feet.  It was in the freezer where I was.  They showed me, they had one of these core slabs laid out and they said, “Mr. Hovind we want you to look at this now.  You see this dark ring and a light ring, just like rings on a tree, that is what we find in these core samples.  They said, what happens in the summer, it gets warm and so the ice melts a little bit and they get a clear layer and when it freezes it makes a clear layer of ice.  In the winter it does not melt so the snow presses down and you get a smashed layer of snow and it turns to what we call milky ice-it has air bubbles trapped in it.  So you have clear and milky and clear and milky and clear and milky, each of these is called an annual ring.  We can count back 135,000 annual rings, so the earth has to be 135,000 years old.”  I said, “Fellows are you not assuming that each of those rings is an annual ring?”  They said, “Well, we know it is.  How else would you get clear ice, milky ice, clear ice, milky ice, I mean it is obvious, look at it you can see it!”

For an introduction to the concept of ice core drilling see The National Ice Core Laboratory

A more detailed explanation can be found here

 ......  Those guys might not know about the lost squadron.

You know there were some airplanes in Greenland that crash landed during World War II, they ran out of gas.  They landed in Greenland, 1942.  A couple of guys thought, you know let’s go get those airplanes.  We ought to put gas in them, dust the snow off the wings and fly them home. So they went to find the airplanes. When they finally found them, in 1990, they were under 263 feet of ice.  Now airplanes do not sink in the ice.  If you put a penny on an ice cube, it will slowly sink to the middle-only at room temperature.  In the freezer that will not happen.  Plus, airplanes are always nose heavy and they would have been nose down.  These airplanes were dead level, they did not sink, ice just accumulated on top of them - 263 feet of ice in 48 years.  Well, let’s see, 263 divided by 48 is about 5 1/2 feet a year.  And the deepest hole they have ever drilled is 10,000 feet.  10,000 feet divided by 5 1/2 is only 1,800 years.

Now I know the deeper you go the more the ice gets squished because of the pressure it turns to a product called glacial firn, and the ice kind of smooths out and all that stuff.  But even 4,400 is very reasonable.  4,400 years is reasonable to account for all the ice of the North and South Pole.

It is likely Hovind got the idea for this "proof' from another Young Earth Creationist named Carl Weiland who published this article The Lost Squadron .  Wieland's claims, and therefore Hovind's, are rebutted with the following article  "Creationist Comedy"  [Thank you Mike Hopkins]

So the question is if the earth is billions of years old, why isn’t there more ice at the North and South Pole?  Why is there only 10,000 feet, would be the question?

Straw man Hovind's rhetorical question ignores the fact that ice sheets are not static structures. In other words, ice sheets move. This is where the material for the glacier that the Lost Squadron landed on came from. For more introductory detail see Does Ice Move?

By the way, I called Bob Cardin, he dug out one of the airplanes.  .....  I said, “Bob, when you dug that airplane out, how many layers of ice were there above the airplane?”
He said, “Oh, there were many hundreds of layers of ice above the airplane.”
I said, “Well, Bob, I was told that each of those layers is a different year - summer, winter, summer, winter.”  He said, “That is impossible!  Each of those layers is a different warm spell - warm, cold, warm, cold, warm, cold.”

Straw man  I checked with Bob Cardin and he said Hovind's recollection is accurate but he went onto explain that he only observed more lenses (distortions in the ice) than he expected.  Cardin did not investigate further, he was busy digging out his planes.  It must also be remembered that Cardin was digging in a glacier which is subject to more internal pressures and distortions than regular ice deposits.  Plus the dating of ice cores does include a margin of error to allow for multiple lenses.

You could get 20 of those in one year.  We have it around here, don't we?  It is not summer, winter, summer ... you see that is their false assumption and it throws all their data off.

Straw man  Hovind is implying that the weather in the frigid regions fluctuates in the same manner as the location from which this sermon was preached.

By the way, they then use the ice core sampling, the oxygen O18 and O16 ratios, to try to validate Carbon 14 dating.  So here we have two rubber rulers measuring against each other.  You can come up with any date you want.  .....

Straw man Surveys of other natural features confirm the data. See  Geology Volume 27, No. 7, p. 577-672, July 1999 for abstracts of studies done on Greenland lake deposits, sampling in the West Himalayas and sediments in Lake Mendota in Wisconsin, USA.

Also see Historical carbon dioxide record from the Vostok ice core

Mississippi Mud

.....  Did you know 80,000 tons of mud every hour comes down the Mississippi and dumps off in New Orleans?  The Delta is growing larger and larger and larger.  Nobody argues about that.  But, they studied the Delta because they drill through it all the time looking for oil down there; they know the thickness of the mud, that is not a problem.  Based on the amount of mud that comes down every year, they say the Delta probably formed in less than 30,000 years.  That is pretty old, but I have a question. If the earth is millions of years old, why isn’t the whole Gulf of Mexico full of mud by now? .....

Straw man Already refuted by Dave Matson  Mississippi River Delta

Oldest tree

Here is a picture of the oldest tree in the world.  You know the oldest tree in the world is in Southern California, a bristle cone pine tree, it is 4,300 years old.  That is an old tree, but I have a question.  If the earth is millions of years old, why do we not have an older tree someplace?  Why is the oldest tree 4,300 years old?  Well, I have a theory about that.  Here is my theory, I believe about 6,000 years ago, God created the heaven and the earth; 4,400 years ago there was a Flood that destroyed the world, so the oldest tree should be less than 4,400 years old.  It is! Amazing!  Now, I would not put a whole lot of stock in tree ring dating because sometimes trees produce several rings a year, for the same reason the ice got several rings a year; you might have different seasons within one year. So pre-ring dating is not an exact science, but sure we will use it if it is what the Bible says.

Straw man The tree species selected for dendrochronological dating are chosen for the very reason their ring production is known to be stable.  Dave Matson has refuted this proof using dendrochronologic dating

False The oldest living bristlecone pine is named Methuselah which is at least 4,700 years old.  This age both invalidates Hovind's claimed age and contradicts the Flood dating by 300 years.  Even worse, the oldest bristlecone ever recorded was 4,862 years old when cut down in 1964.  See The Ancient Bristlecone Pine

Another living example is the Meelup Mallee (Eucalyptus phyllacis), the last known survivor of its species - provisional estimated age of at least 6,300 years (source)

Of course trees aren't the only living things which can be old.  How about a plant that has been cloning itself for a minimum of 43 500 years?  Lomatia tasmanica

Contradiction  Notice Hovind says he will accept evidence under the condition that "we will use it if it is what the Bible says".  That is the scientific equivalent of putting the cart before the horse.

Non sequitur Let's use a little armchair logic.  Why is it necessary for the Earth to be as young as the oldest living organism? If the oldest organism was, say, 100 years old, that would only set the minimum age, not the true age.  Actually Hovind is trying to prove the age of the Earth by implying a global flood destroyed all plant life.   That is poor logic because even if there was a global flood this still does not establish the age of the planet.

Great Barrier Reef

Here is a picture of a coral reef growing under water.  You know the largest reef in the world is in Australia, the Great Barrier Reef.  .....  You know during World War II, some of the reef was damaged and destroyed by ships and anchors and bombs and stuff like that, so the environmentalist wackos went out there to see how fast it grows back.  They watched it grow for 20 years.  It was a government project!  After watching the reef grow for 20 years, they decided the Great Barrier Reef is less than 4,200 years old.  That is pretty old, but I have a question.  If the earth is millions of years old, why don’t we have a bigger reef someplace?  Why is the oldest reef less than 4,200 years old?

Non sequitur  The Great Barrier Reef (which is a chain of reefs) is the largest by total area covered.  Area is not a correlation of age.

Dave Matson has tackled this question with more technicality than I can  Oldest Coral Reef

It must also be noted that coral reefs are colonies of living organisms which usually prefer shallow water and are susceptible to environmental hazards (storms, predators, disease, changing ocean levels) the age of any particular reef region or individual reef is not applicable to the overall age of the Earth.

Hovind's claim originates from a 1985 Answers in Genesis claim How old is Australia's Great Barrier Reef?. Some years ago I emailed AIG asking for a more exact source of their data to which they replied they would provide to me "shortly" but no details were provided.   

I have no idea where Hovind got the "environmental wackos" idea from.

..... Things grew much bigger, much faster in the pre Flood world.  You might find fossilized reefs that are enormous, but they were very different growth rate than they have today for reasons which we will see later.

Circular reasoning The age of these reefs (measured by growth) was supposed to be the evidence for Hovind's Young Earth. First Hovind claims the age of reefs prove a Young Earth but then Hovind reinterprets reef growth rates that don't fit based upon his preconception of a young Earth.

Niagara Falls

This textbook shows a picture of Niagara Falls, and how Niagara Falls is eroding.  All waterfalls eat away at the  bank and it slowly erodes back.  .....  This textbook says, “Niagara Falls has been eroding for nearly 9,900 years.”  .....  It is moving, according to the museum guide, 4.7 feet a year.  Nearly 5 feet a year. .....  If the earth is billions of years old, why has it not moved all the way to Lake Erie by now or clear to Florida for that matter?  Why is Niagara Falls right there?  Well, I have a theory about that!  Here is my theory; .....  As the Flood water was running off, about half of that creek washed out the first 15 minutes because they had lots of water moving through soft mud.  Today it is just a trickle and it is over solid rock so erosion rate is pretty slow.  But, man that first 15 minutes was bad!

Niagara Falls is where it is because it started its journey at the end of the last Ice Age.  At least Hovind acknowledges the accepted age of Niagara Falls is about 10 000 years. Some Young Earth Creationists try to construct a straw man that the Falls were supposed to by flowing since the dawn of time which, due to the rate of retreat, would be impossible.

Circular reasoning  Hovind has softened his argument to the point of being an illustration of his Young Earth scenario.  The fact that he is then trying to use his newly explained Niagara Falls as evidence for his conclusion of a Young Earth is a classic illustration of circular reasoning.  He is also claiming the age of the Earth based upon his claim of a global flood.

Saltier Oceans

You know when it rains, 30% of the water runs into the oceans bringing with it mineral salts.  The oceans are getting saltier everyday because the water washes salts in and evaporation takes pure water out leaves the salts behind. The oceans today are 3.6% salt, well, they could have done that in less than 5,000 years.  ..... They are becoming saltier everyday, plus not to mention the huge salt domes which occasionally erode into the ocean which add bunch of tons of salt in a few minutes, as salt domes. .....  See, the oceans indicate the earth is not billions of years old. .....

Straw man  Hovind has conveniently ignored the processes by which metals ("salt") are physically and chemically removed.  See The oceans should be much saltier?

Stalactites and Stalagmites

How many have ever gone into a cave and the guide said "Don’t touch the stalactites, they take millions of years to form."  You ever heard that?  You go to Carlsbad Caverns, they will say it took 250 million years to make this cavern. They say it takes 1,000 years to grow one inch of stalactite.  I do not think so!  There is a bat covered up with flowstone before he could rot from National Geographic. Don’t you think the bat would rot in less than a few thousand years; preserved on top of a stalagmite, they grow even slower.  There are 50-inch long stalactites growing under the Lincoln Memorial.  It was built in 1922; did Lincoln die 50,000 years ago? .....

Straw man Stalactites and stalagmites grow at differing speed depending on the conditions in each area. Dave Matson has already tackled this claim Stalactites and the Age of the Earth

Erosion Rates

You know when it rains, 30% of the water runs into the oceans.  As it runs in it brings with it not only salt, it brings with it soil.  The mountains are eroding; everything is washing away.  At the current rate of erosion, the continents will be flat in 14 million years. [text has been rearranged for clarity] ..... If the fossils are really millions of years old we have a problem because the continents would have eroded away 5 times since the dinosaurs were here.  How come we still find their bones on land?  No, erosion rate proves it is not billions of years old.  .....

Straw man Faulty assumptions lead to faulty conclusions. See The rate of continental erosion by Dave Matson.  Also see The Misguided Erosion Argument by Glen Morton.

Plus, the oceans are filling in with sediments and there is only enough sediment out there for a few thousand years.

Similar to the faulty assumptions made above. See Sedimentary Deposits in Oceans by Dave Matson

The following are some additional supposed Young Earth Proofs quoted from Article 2

Shrinking Sun

The shrinking sun limits the earth-sun relationship to less than "billions of years." The sun is losing both mass and diameter.  Changing the mass would upset the fine gravitational balance that  keeps the earth at just the right distance for life to survive.

False  Another one of those Young Earth proofs based upon extrapolation of flawed data.
See Shrinking Sun? by Dave Matson

See also Kent Hovind's Solar Mass Claim by David C. Wise.

NEWS FLASH:  Kent Hovind claimed on 7 January 2002 to have abandoned the Shrinking Sun Argument [1].
Yet in February 2002 you could still find Hovind using the argument on his web site.

[1]     http://www.cbbc.net/RS/ 6 Jan 2002 Session #5 @ 8:00

Fossil Meteorites

Fossil meteorites are very rare in layers other than the top layers of the earth. This indicates that the layers were not exposed for millions of years as is currently being taught in school textbooks.

False Dave Matson provides an extensive list of known ancient meteorite impacts

Isotopes on the Moon

The moon contains considerable quantities of U-236 and Th-230, both short-lived isotopes that would have been long gone if the moon were billions of years old.

Straw man Dave Matson has provided a good technical rebuttal of the misunderstanding of isotopes that this 'proof' is based upon

Space Dust

The existence of great quantities of space dust, which by the Pointing-Robertson effect would have been vacuumed out of our solar system in a few thousand years, indicates the solar system is young.

False See Space dust still in the solar system

Star Cluster Expansion

At the rate many star clusters are expanding, they could not have been travelling for billions of years.

False See At the rate many star clusters are expanding ....

Lava Formation

The volume of lava on earth divided by its rate of efflux gives a number of only a few million years, not billions. I believe that during the Flood, while "the fountains of the deep were broken up," most of the earth’s lava was deposited rapidly.

False See The volume of lava on earth

Helium in the Atmosphere

The amount of Helium 4 in the atmosphere, divided by the formation rate on earth, gives only 175,000 years. (God may have created the earth with some helium which would reduce the age more.)

Notice that the beginnings of this "proof" doesn't support Hovind's claimed Earth age.  Hovind then invokes the supernatural to overcome this flaw.

What Hovind isn't telling you is how helium behaves in the atmosphere. Atmospheric Helium by Dave Matson

Topsoil Formation

Topsoil formation rates indicate only a few thousand years of formation.

Straw man Hovind has ignored the fact that top soil erodes.

Ocean Sediment

A relatively small amount of sediment is now on the ocean floor, indicating only a few thousand years of accumulation. This embarrassing fact is one of the reasons why the continental drift theory is vehemently defended by those who worship evolution.

Straw man The "continental drift theory" more accurately know as plate tectonics is the observed explanation of such phenomena as earthquakes as well as the recycling of continental crust.

On the issue of ocean sediment see Dave Matson's rebuttal

Genetic Load

Another factor to consider: The genetic load in man is increasing.  Geneticists have cataloged nearly 1300 genetic disorders in the human race. It is certainly reasonable to believe that the human race was created perfect from the hand of the Creator but has been going downhill as a result of our disobedience to the laws established by the Creator and the increased radiation from the sun. The Bible teaches that we live in a sin-cursed world as a result of Adam’s sin.

Red herring This "proof" doesn't even have any claimed evidence. So what if there are 1300 recognized genetic disorders in humans?  There is no evidence this has increased from some perfect past.  Hovind's argument fails before it even begins.

Oldest Historical Records

The oldest known historical records are less than 6000 years old.

Contradiction The oldest writing is approximately 5,000 years old. This fact alone contradicts Hovind's claim of a global flood because all human records and civilization should have been erased in the Flood which supposedly happened 4,400 years ago. Plus I am assuming Hovind is also holding to a literal Tower of Babel as well which also conflicts with the available evidence.   However, evidence of human habitation previous to the settlement of major cities dates back 10,000's of years.

Flood Legends

Many ancient cultures have stories of an original creation in the recent past and a worldwide Flood. Nearly 300 of these Flood legends are now known.

Yes and they vary in as many ways as they are similar. If Hovind wants to use that argument why not use another culture's flood myth as the basis for his sermons? Working from memory, there is an African myth that the world was flooded with beer, now that is what I call a flood worth having.

Floods play an important part in human culture because much of human civilization is centered around the most agriculturally productive environments which are usually the flood plains of rivers.  When these rivers flood the effect on the local population is devastating and so it's obvious how such significant events influence folklore and mythology.

Two of the most significant cultures which have left records, the Egyptians and the Chinese left no records of the Biblical flood occurring. These two cultures existed through the claimed period of the Flood without even getting their feet wet.

Biblical Dates

Biblical dates add up to about 6000 years.

Circular reasoning  All of the Young Earth Proofs above are supposed to support the claim the Earth is only 6000 years old because that is what a literal reading of the Old Testament indicates.  Actually, the Bible doesn't explicitly say any of this.  The reader has to add up all the claimed ages of the Old Testament characters to acquire the claimed age.  Nowhere in the Bible is it written, for example, "King David took the throne 3000 years after the formation of the world".

Those who believe the earth is billions of years old will typically try to discredit one or two of these evidences and then mistakenly think that they have successfully proven the entire list wrong. This is not logical, of course. Each evidence stands independently: it only takes one to prove the earth is young. The burden of proof is on the evolutionists if they expect all taxpayers to fund the teaching of their religion in the school system. Many who believe in evolution are great at "straining at a gnat, and swallowing a camel" (Mt. 23:24).

Evolutionists love to assume uniformitarian processes. Many of the preceding evidences follow the same logic evolutionists use all the time in dealing with carbon dating, strata formation, genetic drift [sic], etc.

It is unwise to apply uniformatarionism without considering all the factors applying to a process.

I think Hovind meant to say "continental drift" instead of "genetic drift".  Genetic drift is a directly observed process which explains certain distributions of genetic traits.  Continental drift is also an observed and measurable phenomena.

It is interesting to read the ramblings of nay-sayers like Scott, Matson, Babinski, etc. as they try to answer theses evidences for a young universe. See how many times they use words like: we believe, perhaps, could have, there is some reason to believe, etc .....

I'm glad that Hovind knows of the existence of the refutations by Dave Matson and others which I have cross referenced in this rebuttal.  However it is saddening that Hovind still preaches his inaccuracies after he has acknowledged he has been made aware of his errors. Then again, there wouldn't be a need for this web site if Hovind did stop.

Regarding the use of qualifier phrases like "perhaps" and "could have", this shows, despite Hovind's claims, the science which supports evolution theory (in whatever form Hovind wants to use the phrase) is not a religion.  Religions make statements dogmatically and no further questioning or revision is allowed.  Good science writing should indicate that conclusions are tentatively drawn from the available evidence and are subject to change if additional evidence is acquired.

Contradiction Actually it is more of an example of hypocrisy.  The follow is an extract from just one of Hovind's own web pages (except Hovind is trying to fit evidence into a preconceived conclusion rather than drawing a conclusion from available evidence).

It is reasonable to assume ... No one knows for sure  ..... There seem to be about 8000 basic kinds ..... possibly even a food distribution system..... Some have suggested .....  I do not know exactly how Noah .....